What is roaming and - what isn’t? ⋆ Alertify

What is roaming and – what isn’t?

Roaming is when a mobile phone moves out of its network region and attaches to different networks in order to resume service.

For example, if you’re on an Orange UK contract and you fly to, say, Italy, you may very well be outside Orange’s network and therefore incur roaming charges.

The EU “roam like at home” rules mean that when you use your mobile phone while travelling outside your home country in any EU country you don’t have to pay any additional roaming charges. You benefit from these rules when calling (to mobile and fixed phones), sending text messages (SMS) and using data services while abroad.

You pay exactly the same price for using these services when travelling in the EU as you would if you were at home. In practice, your operator simply charges or takes your roaming consumption from the volumes in your domestic mobile tariff plan / bundle.

Roam like at home is intended for people who occasionally travel outside the country where they live or have stable links i.e. they work or study there. It’s not meant to be used for permanent roaming. As long as you spend more time at home than abroad, or you use your mobile phone more at home than abroad, you can roam freely at domestic prices when travelling anywhere in the EU. This is considered a “fair use of roaming services”.

If you use your mobile phone abroad permanently, your mobile operator may charge you for your roaming use. These charges are capped however.

If you’re making an international call, you’re in the UK but calling someone who’s in a different country. So you’ll still be using the UK network.

The main point is that if you are in the UK calling someone who has gone abroad with their UK mobile, you aren’t making an international call, it doesn’t matter to you where in the world the phone is, it’s the same cost as if it was in the UK.

If you are in France or Germany and use your UK mobile to call a landline number in another EU country that call will be chargeable: calling another country, either from home or while you are away, is not considered as roaming, and as such the EU’s “roam like at home” rules don’t apply. So, if you are using your UK mobile in France to call a German landline this is chargeable. A call to a German number from a UK mobile whilst in the UK is similarly chargeable.

However, if you stay in France and call a local landline – say, a French restaurant – that is considered to be roaming and therefore costs the same as if you were at home, and can be made from any calls package.

Also, a British mobile user holidaying in France could call their partner’s UK mobile in Germany, and as they are both roaming it would cost no more than if they were at home.

Moreover, a “very small number” of EU operators can still charge a small roaming fee to make up for lower-than-usual domestic rates. Also, travelling abroad for more than four months means extra fees.

Exceeding allowances would still be chargeable in the EU as it would in the UK and different providers included different countries in their roaming territories, such as the Channel Islands and Switzerland.

“However, it is important that you take a close look at what is or isn’t included in your current mobile deal. Not knowing what’s included could lead to some surprising charges on your next bill.” said Alex Neill, managing director in Which?

Another interesting point, made by Luca Schiavoni, a telecom regulation analyst at Ovum, a technology research group, in London, is that just a minority of Europeans regularly travel beyond their home country borders.

“There’s just a small percentage of consumers who will benefit from the scrapping of roaming charges,” he told The New York Times. “It’s for the few, not the many.”

Fair use policy

Mobile operators may apply what is known as a “fair use policy” to ensure that all roaming customers have access to and benefit from the roam like at home rules (i.e. regulated roaming services at domestic price) when travelling in the EU. Mobile operators may apply fair, reasonable and proportionate control mechanisms to avoid abusive use of these rules.

Fair use policy and data limits

When you roam like at home there are no volume restrictions for voice calls and SMS, but there are rules and limits for data usage at domestic price which are determined by the type of contract you have.

In some specific cases (see below), beyond a reasonably high volume of roaming data at domestic price, you may have to pay a data roaming surcharge which will be equal to the wholesale (EU-wide) data cap (€7.70 / GB of data in 2017 plus VAT). This wholesale roaming price is the maximum your domestic operator has to pay a foreign operator when you use data roaming services.

Data limits – pre-paid cards

If you have a pre-paid card (meaning that you pay in advance for using your mobile phone) you can roam like at home. However, your mobile operator may apply a roam like at home limit for data if you pay per unit and your domestic unit price for data is less than €7.70 per GB.

If your mobile operator applies a roam like at home volume limit for data, that limit should be at least the volume obtained by dividing the remaining credit on your pre-paid card by €7.70 as soon you start using data roaming services. You will get the same volume of roaming data that you have paid for in advance. You can of course top up your credit while roaming.

Sample story:

Jana lives in Slovakia and has a pre-paid card with €20 credit (including VAT) for her mobile phone, which covers calls, SMS and data services. When she goes on holiday to Spain, she has €12 (excluding VAT) credit left on her card. This means that during her holiday in Spain Jana can have a volume of data equal to the value of the remaining credit on her pre-paid card. She will get at least 1.5 GB of roaming data (€12/€7.70 = 1.5).

Data limits – national bundles with unlimited data

If you have acontract where you pay a fixed monthly fee and it includes bundled services with unlimited data, your mobile operator must provide you with a large volume of roam like at home data. The exact amount will depend on the price you pay for your mobile bundle. The roaming data volume must be at least twice the volume obtained by dividing the price of your mobile bundle (excluding VAT) by the wholesale data roaming cap (€7.70 in 2017).

For example: you pay €40 (excluding VAT) for your mobile bundle with unlimited calls, SMS and data. When you roam like at home in the EU, you get unlimited calls and SMS and at least 10.3 GB of data (2x(€40/€7.70) =10.3).

Data limits – national bundles with limited data

If you have limited or very cheap mobile data (less than €3.85 / GB in 2017), your operator may apply a “fair use” limit for data when you are roaming. The limit is calculated on the basis of the retail price of your domestic mobile bundle as in the case of unlimited data (above).

Your operator must inform you in advance about this limit and will have to alert you when you reach it. Be aware that you can continue data roaming but your operator will apply a surcharge. This surcharge will be the wholesale data cap = €7.70 / GB of data in 2017 plus VAT, €6 / GB plus VAT in 2018. The data cap will decrease further after 2018.

Fair use policy – monitoring

As part of their fair use policy, your operator can monitor and check your roaming use over a 4 month period. If, during this period, you have spent more time abroad than at home and your roaming exceeds your domestic usage, your operator may contact you and ask you to clarify your situation. You will have 14 days to do so. If you continue to spend more time abroad than you do at home and your roaming consumption continues to exceed your domestic usage your operator may start applying a surcharge to your roaming consumption. The surcharges (excluding VAT) are capped as follows:

3.2 cents per minute of voice call made
1 cent per SMS
€7.70 per GB of data (cap in 2017)

The cap for data will progressively decrease on 1 January each year as from 2018 as follows: €6, €4.50, €3.50, €3 to €2.50 in 2022. The cap after 2019 may be revised following a review of the wholesale roaming markets in 2019.

Fair use policy – cross border workers

If you work in one EU country and live in a different one,you can choose a mobile operator in either country and roam like at home with a SIM from the country where you live or from the country where you work. The roam like at home fair use policy applies: as long as you log on at least once a day to your domestic operator’s network, it will count as a day of presence (even if you go abroad the same day).

Calling from home / roaming outside the EU

Calling another EU or non-EU country from home is not considered as roaming so the roam like at home rules don’t apply. You should be aware that the prices for these calls are not regulated and can be expensive.

The cost of roaming (particularly data roaming) outside the EU can be expensive, so to avoid running up steep roaming bills check the cost for roaming outside the EU with your provider before travelling.

Roaming while travelling by ship or plane

When travelling by ship or plane in the EU you can roam like at home as long as you are connected to a terrestrial (land-based) mobile network. If mobile services are provided via satellite systems, roam like at home no longer applies and you will be charged for non-regulated roaming services (no price caps).

Protection of personal data

Your operator is required to comply with the relevant personal data protection rules and may only use your data (which they already have for billing purposes) to check and compare your roaming usage with your domestic consumption.

If things go wrong – your consumer rights

If you think your service provider has not respected your roam like at home rights and you have been charged for roaming services while travelling within the EU, contact your operator and use the complaint procedure in place to contest these extra charges.

If you are not satisfied with the response you can contact the relevant national regulatory authorities in your country, usually your national telecoms regulator who will resolve your case.