* EU's Kroes says exorbitant roaming cost is outdated
* Says not afraid to take necessary measures to tackle issue
* Kroes wants more competition in net neutrality issue
* Deutsche Telekom backs lower prices
(Adds Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia comments)
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The European Union is ready to take steps to cut roaming fees charged by telecoms operators to the level of domestic tariffs, the bloc's telecoms chief said on Thursday, calling high costs an "an outdated concept".
Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who oversees telecoms and the Internet across the 27-country EU, blamed the problem on a lack of competition.
Her predecessor Viviane Reding shocked the telecoms industry in 2008 by capping the amount mobile phone companies could charge for calls, sending text messages and downloading data while abroad. The European Parliament backed the proposals last year.
"The (European) Commission's review of the Roaming Regulation must look at the source of the problem and potential solutions in their full context," Kroes told a European Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO) conference.
"The relevant context is the lack of a really competitive single market for all aspects of telecoms services in Europe."
Kroes' call for lower rates was backed by Germany's Deutsche Telekom. "I support that thinking. We are net payers. The industry needs more customer-centric roaming rates, they need to come down," Chief Executive Rene Obermann told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
Telecom Italia Chief Executive Franco Bernabe said prices are expected to fall in future.
"It is only reasonable to think in the medium term the mobile termination fees will come down to the fixed rates. Roaming charges have to be coherent. It is only a problem of graduation, a matter of time," he told Reuters. In her previous job as EU competition commissioner, Kroes imposed fines worth billions of euros on companies that broke EU antitrust rules.
She said a genuine EU single market should be one where price differences between voice, text messages and data were based only on the actual cost of providing these services.
"I will assess the structural, economic and legal barriers to such a true single market and I am not afraid to propose the necessary measures to overcome these," Kroes said.
"But some real out-of-the-box thinking is needed for that. In this scenario the exorbitant cost of 'roaming' abroad within the EU is an outdated concept," she said.
On the difficult issue of net neutrality -- level access to the Internet -- Kroes said regulators would probably not intervene if there was more competition in the market.
"Strong competition in broadband markets may allow a more relaxed regulatory approach to net neutrality issues," she said. (Additional reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Editing by Timothy Heritage and David Holmes)