Viviane Reding, the European Union's Telecommunications Commissioner, is our new wireless hero. She's demanding that wireless carriers in Europe begin billing on a per-second basis rather than per-minute, because "at the retail level, the difference between billed and actual minutes appears to be typically around 20 percent."

She's also threatening to place caps on fees for SMS services and data plans if carriers don't cut their rates.

Compare that to the U.S., where as recently as last week a lone congresswoman had to ask three national carriers when they were going to honor their promise to pro-rate ETFs, and AT&T Mobility wouldn't even answer her.

(Thanks to Sanjay, who says that in France there are already some carriers offering per-second billing.)

"EU wireless regulatory body looks into mobile phone billing - European Commission wants per-second mobile phone billing" [IntoMobile]
(Photo: World Economic Forum)