According to a BBC report, the United Kingdom Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) will be levying large fines on mobil phone text spammers. In March the ICO started asking consumers to report unwanted calls, texts, and emails, and was deluged with over 30,000 complaints. After sifting through them, they identified bulk text spammers, and announced fines of over £250,000 (about $400,000) unless the spammers can show that they had the permission of the texts' recipients, which of course they can't.
Here in the US, text spam is illegal under the TCPA, the law that forbids junk faxes and other recipient-pays telephone messages, and a few court cases have confirmed it. The FTC has not made text spam a major emphasis, but given the amount ot text spam we're seeing, they need to, soon.
