Taking a hint from the recently proposed cap on sms roaming costs by The European Commission, the US Senate Judiciary Committee is asking four top wireless carriers to justify the "sharply rising rates" they charge people to send and receive text messages. Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl is very concerned about the rising text messaging rates. He is concerned as to why some customers are now paying 20 cents per message when they paid just 10 cents in 2005 even though the number of national carriers shrunk from six to four.

In letters to top executives at Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. ,and T-Mobile, Democrat Herb Kohl has outlined his woes and has asked for a revision by the carriers. The companies so far have only responded by a polite acknowledgment of the letter and assure of full cooperation with the senator.

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