U Turn as Vodafone UK Reintroduce EU Mobile Roaming Charges
Well, that was one of the fastest U-turns in history. Mobile operator Vodafone UK, which in June 2021 (here) told ISPreview.co.uk they had “no current plans to change our approach to roaming in the EU” (this after rival EE reintroduced roaming charges), has now decided to introduce such charges after all.
Previously, customers of Vodafone were largely free to use their domestic UK allowances (calls, texts and data), at no extra cost, when roaming around the EU. Take note that, even under the so-called “free” roaming rules, a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) with data caps will usually still apply in order to prevent abuse (i.e. this is largely because not all EU countries offer unlimited data allowances on their domestic plans).
Under the change, new and upgrading Pay Monthly customers will, from 11th August 2021, agree to pay £2 per day to use their monthly allowance of data (mobile broadband), calls and texts when roaming around the EU. But this can technically be reduced to just £1 by purchasing a multi-day pass for 8 or 15 days – for £8 and £15 respectively.
At present there are no changes to their Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans.
If your Vodafone Pay monthly plan started before 11 August 2021:
There will be no change to the way you roam as long as you stay on your current mobile plan, so you won’t need to pay any additional charges.
If you join Vodafone, upgrade or change your plan on or after 11 August 2021:
If your plan doesn’t include roaming in Europe, there will be a daily charge for using your phone in our European roaming zones. View our roaming zone list to see which country is in which zone. These charges will only start on 6th January 2022 for personal and small business customers.
For other business customers, changes will come into effect from November, but charges will not start until 6 January 2022.
This European roaming charge won’t apply to Xtra Airtime Plans with 4 Xtra benefits.
We’re not making any changes to VOXI, Pay as you go plans, Talkmobile or Vodafone Basics at this time.
All of this is rather disappointing and will seriously erode trust in the public commitments that mobile operators sometimes make. The reality is of course that the recent EU-UK Trade Agreement didn’t guarantee free EU roaming for the future (EU policy), but it did contain “measures to encourage cooperation on the promotion of fair and transparent rates for international mobile roaming services in ways that can help promote the growth of trade among the Parties and enhance consumer welfare.”
The Government has at least introduced some limited protection against the risk of future EU roaming BILL SHOCKs by adding a legislated cap of £45 on roaming charges and related warnings (first proposed in 2018), although they stopped short of forcing operators to retain free roaming.
As we said in June, we tend to take phrases like “no plans” with a pinch of highly ambiguous salt, as plans can and often do change, particularly in the telecoms industry. If we had a pound for every time a broadband ISP or mobile operator had said they had “no plans” for something, only to change course a few months later.
Nevertheless, Vodafone’s credibility has just taken a huge knock, particularly as some consumers will have made switching decisions based on their recent statements to retain the previous roaming policy.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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It seems that economics matters after all – if the ISPs are to be hit with additional charges then they can be expected to pass them on to their customers eventually.
Sounds like Brexit is a pretty good deal for mobile operators — they get to charge roaming EU operators higher wholesale rates (keeping the profits) and they’ll pass on the higher rates they pay when we roam.
Considering when roaming it is also Vodafone networks we roam onto in the EU, you would think they would have an agreement regarding charges across the Vodafones, and if in reality the network incurred additional charges on itself, then it’s only moving money between the various geographies, so why the need to charge the customer? Because they can! Pure greed. If they are raising the price for use abroad and removing that benefit for everyone, then everyone should also be getting a reduction in their contract price?
Another Brexit Bonus. To the 52% – thanks guys!
Nothing to do with Brexit. Just greedy operators, the usual ones, trying it on hoping that people will think that…..
@anonymous
It’s everything to do with Brexit.
@anonymus Brexit is the cause of this, no ifs, no buts. If we hadn’t left those greedy operators wouldn’t have been able to impose the charges.
These little perks the EU offers you are not free, they come at the price of sovereignty and loss of liberty.
As for the operators I suspect the policy is a result of deals falling through with continental operators and they now have little choice but to charge, even if they have operations in some EU states.
Brexit: making you pay for stuff that used to be free. But at least we have our “sovereignty” (whatever that means).
“Nothing to do with Brexit”
Are you really that thick?
People seem to forget that whilst part of the EU for many many years we didn’t have free roaming at all, and paid quite a lot of money for daring to use a mobile abroad. The reason it become “no extra charge” was because the EU introduced legislation, which the UK had to comply with when joined up to the EU, that forced operators to offer “free” roaming, but it was never free, everyone pays a bit extra to cover it. So to get a couple of weeks of roaming now, Vodafone want £15.00 or there about, which compared to the cost of a holiday, Covid tests, car parking, flights etc, it’s perfectly affordable. Hopefully this allows some cheaper deals to come about for limited calls and data for those on low incomes who couldn’t afford to go abroad if they wanted to.
Also don’t forget, the reason we’ve vaccinated most of the population in the UK for Covid is because we left the EU and could sort ourselves out, we wouldn’t have achieved that if we had the bureaucracy of the EU still to contend with.
If the UK government had wanted they could have copied across the same legislation to UK law to force free roaming, but that is then bringing across the same red tape and bureaucracy we wanted to leave behind. What was introduced was far pricing caps to avoid bill shock. Hopefully the extra revenue and so profit (not that they will make much money given the low numbers travelling abroad at the moment) will feed back into better infrastructure in UK.
So if you want someone to blame, blame the UK government for not introducing the same laws to make roaming free, and nothing stopping people now from writing to their local MPs.
Arguably for people living in the UK roaming isn’t that much of a concern, as to get to somewhere that we need roaming we already have worse additional expenses attached to getting there. In the EU where people near to various borders and are constantly going back and forth it is more relevant and important for people and businesses to have no roaming charges to worry about.
^^^ That’s a very long winded way of saying that it was down to EU legislation which allowed UK mobile operators to allow free EU roaming.
I had EU roaming on Vodafone and Three before it was EU law.
@Phil I wondered who would bring the vaccine argument into it. It doesn’t hold up however when several EU countries are now ahead of the UK in terms of overall % of adults vaccinated.
So maybe Boris & co didn’t do such a good job, and shafted us on the vaccines along with everything else.
From Vodafone:
“The majority of our customers are not regular roamers,” said Ahmed Essam, Vodafone’s CEO. “Indeed, fewer than half our customers roamed beyond the Republic of Ireland in 2019. And the reality is that including roaming – a service that costs us money to provide – in every plan means more than half of our customers are paying for something that they don’t use. What’s free for one person usually has to be paid for by someone else.”
The UK average mobile data consumption is approximately 2.9GB/month, abroad they’ll use a lot more.
people who thought it was free, don’t understand that overseas network operators want renumeration for network usage.
It’s not about leave or remain as the debate appears to be going, i know remainers who didn’t like subsiding roaming through high contractual & payg pricing at home for those that want to watch TV/stream on holiday and glad it ended. use hotel wifi or buy a local sim.
It was never free, someone always picks up the bill as it’s always passed on to the consumer.
Phil…
‘Also don’t forget, the reason we’ve vaccinated most of the population in the UK for Covid is because we left the EU and could sort ourselves out, we wouldn’t have achieved that if we had the bureaucracy of the EU still to contend with.’
We literally approved Pfizer and AZ and began their rollout while under EU rules. Our own government made clear it didn’t impede us.
Given this basic factual error the rest of your post isn’t worth bothering with, being as it is more at home on the pages of the Daily Express than reality.
@Mike The reason for the lack of roaming charges within the EEA was an EU directive.
Whether you think regaining the sovereignty we never actually lost (source government white paper) is worth it or not doesn’t change that it wasn’t commercial, it was regulation.
@Phil
You said “Hopefully this allows some cheaper deals to come about for limited calls and data for those on low incomes who couldn’t afford to go abroad if they wanted to.”
In fact Vodafone already offered pay monthly plans without roaming and international calling: Vodafone Basics. The plans are cheaper than standard pay monthly tariffs.
Yeah, let’s spend £billions per year on a membership to get “Free Roaming” LOL
What do you say to people who are paying for roaming outside the EU? As in the rest of the world?
@Gareth Yeah, because the billions in payment was ONLY for free roaming right? Get lost fool. Where are those billions we’ve saved on membership going now then? Crown jewels? Public infrastructure? NHS? UK charities? Nope! Try again.
When you try, you will find that any so called “saving” has been eaten up entirely by costs to us incurred by having to legislate stuff ourselves, I.e. the things that we didn’t have to bother with before because we used the EU standards. Yet more has been costed to us through lost productivity, loss of jobs (Brexit not COVID related) and the absolute mass of red tape that will take years to catch up with if we ever do.
And yet, faced with all these facts, plebs like you will still hound on vacuously about how at least we aren’t paying all this money to Europe now! Sovereign nation! Our nation is in tatters. We’re a country of racist hooligans, with massive national debt, a crumbling health and social care system, spiralling child hunger and an ever widening gap between rich and poor. And you? You’re a turkey that voted for Christmas. Gobble gobble gammon.
@Stephen Take your bitter remoaner rant somewhere else. The world didn’t end after Brexit, 500,000 jobs didn’t disappear, the housing market didn’t collapse, food was still on shelves….Covid has caused way more damage to the UK, yet people like you want to try and prove that you were right….even though you were not. Silly billy!
You know you can still get “FREE Roaming” right? Just move to anyone of your precious EU States….it’s not “FREE” by the way, it’s just people like you that think it’s free.
The majority of their plans include 4xtra benefits already, so there isn’t really much change – it’ll mostly effect those who take sim only plans as they mostly have no xtra benefits included.
This was always going to happen, even when the networks said no increases would occur so it isn’t a surprise to me
[admin note: Swearing and abuse removed]
lol no mobile roaming for free = Nazism. Ok pal.
I suspect ‘TruthSpeak’ is a National Front member.
People ignoring the continuous slide towards authoritarianism and eroding of our liberties because Boris ‘got Brexit done’ are far closer to that description.
Ignoring authoritarianism because you like the direction the authoritarians take is literally the gestation of Nazism.
Cool story bro!
I recall the hilarity when the EU asked for clarity on real world additional costs for roaming data.
In essence, there was no extra cost beyond what they all charged each other. It was 90+% profit at one point. It did however force some market consolidation to EU wide networks.
£1-£2 a day. Big deal, not.
I guess money grows on trees for you (halfwit)
For now.
£1-2 a day that you didn’t have to pay before and where, as far as the networks are concerned, there is no cost to them related to this change, just an opportunity to charge more money? Big deal.
Let’s roll with that then and apply it to other stuff. Let’s get shot of the NHS and just blanket charge every adult in the UK £5 a day for mandatory health insurance. £5 is fair because it’s far more important than roaming with a phone. So now, on top of NI and PAYE you need to pay £155 a month for healthcare even if you don’t use it. So what?
Let’s apply it to roads as well, because road tax doesn’t pay for road maintenance as we all know. That’s £1 a day for that please. Doesn’t matter if you own a car or not. You have to pay it should you ever set foot on a road because you cause wear and tear by doing so and everybody should pay their own way.
Your statement is naive and shortsighted. The amount isn’t even the issue, it’s more about the principle. And yeah, you and I could likely easily afford those costs, but are you that selfish and ignorant that you assume everyone is like you?
Why should customers who don’t need cost-free roaming subsidise those who do?
This is the exact line every overpaid Telco PR reps dragged out everytime people questioned the cartelesque behaviour dominating all global mobile companies. Before the EU stepped in to regulate the excessive prices.
Lo and behold, the regulation lapses and two of the major UK carriers increase their costs at exactly the same time with similar rates. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence!
How did you subside it before? or maybe better question, will you pay less monthly after 11th of August for what you’ve got now? You are very naive.
They may not anyway. You are aware roaming goes both ways and is a reciprocal thing between networks, right? Companies trade access to one another’s networks, agree a contract and charge each other for carriage.
Perfectly possible for one side of the deal to make profit purely from the roaming charges it receives from the other so no need to charge its own customers for roaming on that network as the other side is paying all the costs.
Carriers have a bunch of packages, some with enhanced roaming and some without anyway. Any ‘subsidy’ is a function of the packages the provider gives now – with the EEA changes zero need to include any roaming as anything other than a paid for extra.
How long before O2 follows suit?
3 I seem to recall offered free roaming as a USP before the EU directive on this, fingers crossed 3 keeps it’s competitive roaming package!
o2 were the first to take the lead on EU roaming, they reduced it to a 25gb cap (from 2nd August), considering the average UK mobile data usage is around 2.9GB/mon, that’s more than generous.
@nc Three does offer a wider range of roam free countries. This was historically linked to countries where its parent company had a mobile network business.
@Neil EU directive do permit such caps on data usage and many European operators reserve the right to restrict access above whichever limit they set.
Incidentally, O2 Germany is only promising free roaming to the UK until 31st December 2021…
So who does that leave now then ? Three and O2 that allow it for free?
I seem to recall three at least had EU roaming included back in 2015 before all the networks got it a year later.
Three will give you free roaming to some countries. But if you travel to say Canada, you’ll be charged £6,000 per gigabyte. I kid you not:
http://www.three.co.uk/Support/Roaming_and_international/Mobile_roaming?content_aid=1214306373622
You’ll barely be able to switch your phone on before you hit the £45 cap. Kerching!
Do the mobile operators in Canada really charge Three anything like that amount? I doubt it very much.
Ta, Brexit for you. I hate brexiters.
it’s ironic that one of the so called benefits of being in the EU was peddled as being free, when it was passed on through higher bills back home (networks want renumeration).
one of the benefits of leaving means the majority don’t have to subsidised those that go on holiday to watch TV.
from Vodafone actually confirming this fact:
“The majority of our customers are not regular roamers,” said Ahmed Essam, Vodafone’s CEO. “Indeed, fewer than half our customers roamed beyond the Republic of Ireland in 2019. And the reality is that including roaming – a service that costs us money to provide – in every plan means more than half of our customers are paying for something that they don’t use. What’s free for one person usually has to be paid for by someone else.”
@Neil
Then could you tell us how the UK operators currently charge us extra to compensate for the ‘free’ EU roaming? And then tell us how much discounts EE and Vodafone will be providing from 2022 since EU roaming will no longer be included. Some figures please, thanks.
Vodafone’s Basic tariff is cheaper than their standard pay monthly tariffs, partly because it doesn’t allow roaming.
Will Vodafone now reduce its standard pay monthly tariffs where roaming is a chargable extra?
It’s done – calm down. Zero point in ‘hating’ people for pretty much anything let alone how they voted in 2016. This is where we are and need to find a way to improve things.
So just buy a local sim card in the airport as I used too. Cheap as chips.
You beat me to it, tres simple.
Just text whoever your new temporary overseas number.
The number of EU countries where you need to register, supply ID and provide other information before being able to use a SIM has increased in recent years. Therefore users will need to do their research and not assume SIM cards are freely available on arrival or in a usable state without registration.
This ‘solution’ still adds costs that weren’t there beforehand.
How many countries Mike80? Germany, Poland and who else?
@John France
Austria – ID – specifically the operators need to gather your full name, academic level (don’t ask why) and date of birth.
https://www.konsument.at/sim-karten032019
France – ID required on shop purchase. Or registration with ID if bought online.
Germany – ID + additional documentation required for non-German nationals https://www.verivox.de/ratgeber/ausweispflicht-fuer-sim-karten-kommt-7-fragen-und-antworten-116339/
Italy – passport required.
& Belgium also requires registration with ID.
What’s the big deal with ID?
omg spooky telco gonna have my name, my number .. my id. So what? I bought a SIM card in Moscow for a week, lol was awesome cost £13 for unlimited data. Much forms, many hieroglyphs, thank you translator lady.
Re id, unless you can pay by cash, where there is no cctv, and use the phone where there is no cctv, you can still be identified and tracked.
@Steveo
The original point is that you can just pick up a local SIM at the airport to avoid extra roaming costs within the EU.
Many countries now require registration and ID and sometimes other documentation even a prepay SIM.
This is not about the pros and cons about providing an ID or even about the registration process.
It’s to emphasise that there is that extra hurdle, and in some countries it’s no longer that easy to just pick up a SIM like in the UK.
Some countries only introduced registration and ID during the years when UK mobile customers could roam free in Europe and didn’t need a local SIM, so may be unfamiliar with what’s changed since they last bought a local SIM. If they arrive at the airport at some silly hour expecting to buy a SIM and use it immediately, they might be disappointed.
So, I would find £1-2 per day EU roaming fair if:
1) The costs of the the UK subscription falls. £5/month on a sim-only 30 day contract with 5GB of data + unlimited texts/calls would be my expectation.
2). The roaming charge needs to cover more than just the EU/EEA. It should cover Switzerland, Andorra, Faroe Islands etc. as well as places further afield (Turkey, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ as priority)
3). The prepaid packs need to cover up to 8 weeks at £1/day in 1 week increments. Up to three days ad-hoc is OK at £2/day.
However, I expect to be disappointed.
Take it from someone who works in the Government, this is everything to do with Brexit and EU legislation. Our trade deal could have included provision, but we were too busy being annoying because of the likes of Johnson, Patel, Gove, Mogg and co.
Our membership, among other benefits, gave us roaming as part of EU law which was enshrined. No EU law = no roaming. It’s like not being able to use the faster queues at airports.
Just remember, ‘No downsides’ and ‘considerable upsides’ according to David Davis.
Have any telcos ever offered free roaming worldwide?
The closest to that is Three, which have offered roam like home services in non-EU countries. A number of those countries are those where Three or its parent company have a presence.
This really is inevitable and the EU still has a problem. Our behaviour and use is changing all the time, providers are in a competitive market and need to ensure all products are profitable.
The EU “roaming like home” legislation was thrust upon industry and although some have since progressed a lot of it remains Home Routing rather than breakout concepts. Which basically means the traffic is past back to the home network even if the content is in the visited country resulting in with convoluted and unnecessary network paths.
Add to that some people were using a country’s SIM in another on a near permanent basis and with mobile speeds/data allowance increasing 4G/5G the liability to the provider is high.
Therefore to charging for roaming tempers demand and encourages people seek local SIMS or WIFI connectivity. Having commercial agreements for discounts with other operators in country may be better than perpetuating inefficient networking.
So you think it’s a good thing that operators are no longer compelled to offer free EU roaming? Wow. Just wow.
@Ken
I think it’s a good thing that lower class citizens aren’t subsiding middle class lifestyles.
@Meadmodj
You said “Add to that some people were using a country’s SIM in another on a near permanent basis and with mobile speeds/data allowance increasing 4G/5G the liability to the provider is high.”
In fact, mobile operators were always allowed under EU rules to charge roaming fees for users who roamed on a “near permanent basis”. Vodafone and others had clauses in their contracts for charging extra when a user was out of the country for long spells of time.
You also said “Having commercial agreements for discounts with other operators in country may be better than perpetuating inefficient networking.”
Vodafone has EU networks in Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain. Globally, it owns more networks abroad than any other mobile operator present in the UK.
They could negotiate commercial agreements with themselves and perhaps offer customers cheaper roaming in countries where they own a network … but this is about more money moving around Vodafone Group bank accounts.
@Mike
You said “I think it’s a good thing that lower class citizens aren’t subsiding middle class lifestyles”
Leaving aside the snobbish class remarks, those on tighter budgets already had an option to not subsidise roaming by choosing a cheaper Vodafone Basics pay monthly tariff which can only be used in the UK.
My point is purely from an efficiency perspective. Nothing is free and it needs to be paid for. How appears to be a touching a few nerves here.
Booking a local taxi or restaurant or searching for local information via your home country is clearly not the right. If the Internet was a country it would sit around 5th currently but data use is rising all the time. In there is justified need but a lot of it is glossy bloat, advertising, unwanted messaging and in some cases simply bad practice. We can’t change everything overnight but we need to start looking at each element each element from an efficiency and hence ecological standpoint.
If the providers implemented (together) the appropriate methods and we used the right connectivity for the right purpose they could reduce both their and our roaming cost.
5th for energy consumption
@ Meadmodj
“Nothing is free and it needs to be paid for.”
So does that mean from 2022, EE and Vodafone will decrease bills for ALL customers since EU roaming will no longer be included as standard? Proof please. Otherwise you’re just coming out with hot air.
@Andrew. Product pricing is dynamic and doesn’t necessarily follow logic. Even if they did you would not notice. The price protectory for both fixed and mobile in the UK is upwards.
price projectory
Higher bills, food rotting in fields + empty supermarket shelves. Brexit is the gift that keeps on taking.