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No Surprise as VOXI UK Confirms Return of EU Roaming Charges UPDATE

Tuesday, Jan 11th, 2022 (2:48 pm) - Score 10,304
voxi

Contract-free mobile operator VOXI, which is the virtual operator sibling of Vodafone UK, has unsurprisingly followed their parent’s lead by confirming that free EU roaming will come to an end on their network from April 2022 (a little later than the end of January 2022 date set for their parent).

In a brief message on Twitter (credits to Borris), VOXI said: “From April 2022 … customers will need to activate an EU Roaming Pass to enable them to use minutes, texts and data while they’re Roaming in the EU.” At the time of writing, we couldn’t find any pricing for the new EU Roaming Pass, but it seems likely to follow a similar mould to the existing £2 per day charges seen elsewhere.

Sadly, it is somewhat inevitable that the MVNO providers of major operators, including Vodafone, EE (BT) and Three UK, would follow. But precisely when this occurs may vary, depending upon their respective contract terms.

At present only O2, including Virgin Mobile (VMO2), have shunned the move to reintroduce EU roaming charges (here), which we hope will filter down as an additional benefit for their own MVNO partners (e.g. giffgaff, Sky Mobile and Tesco Mobile etc.). Time will tell.

UPDATE 4:56pm

In a surprising development, VOXI, without any explanation, has deleted several tweets where it responded to customers asking about EU roaming charges, including the one we linked to.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
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 .
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Comments
32 Responses
  1. Avatar photo Shaun says:

    I suspect this will disppoint one or two on here who were 100% convinced Voxi wouldn’t follow Vodafone.

    I guess the $64000 question is if/when will O2-VM also do a U-turn?

    1. Avatar photo Mike says:

      I expect all penny pincher providers to follow suite, with only the large providers offering it, if at all.

    2. Avatar photo Jon PENNYCOOK says:

      I think VMO2 thought it would look bad if they reintroduced roaming fees at the same time that many of their customers are receiving letters/emails to tell them their charges are going up. Maybe in 6 months time when everyone has forgotten about the charges going up, roaming fees will applied.

  2. Avatar photo Oliver says:

    Who cares – I wish they would support e-sim though!!

  3. Avatar photo kali says:

    just seen this. check extreme mobile- they offer a esim and 100Gig for 10 pounds for 30 days in the UK. no voice number. they also have international / roaming plans

    1. Avatar photo Andy says:

      Extreme Mobile use TruPhone so a trusted MVNO / Provider of mobile services..

    2. Avatar photo Oliver says:

      Yeah, no.

      Voice is kinda important if I have a work and a home line on the same phone…

  4. Avatar photo Smythe says:

    VOXI have deleted their Tweet

    1. Avatar photo Gary says:

      They haven’t at all.

    2. Avatar photo Jon says:

      “UPDATE 4:56pm

      In a surprising development, VOXI, without any explanation, has deleted several tweets where it responded to customers asking about EU roaming charges, including the one we linked to.”

  5. Avatar photo Alan says:

    Asda Mobile are still saying free roaming included. Is this like to change after VOXI announcement?

  6. Avatar photo splatterbocks says:

    use your phone abroad or turn it off.

    £2 a day is far cheaper than it used to be, I dont know what the big deal is.

    We’re not in the big boys club anymore so its time to suck the phallus that is brexit and get on with our lives.

    1. Avatar photo A Bloke says:

      “£2 a day is far cheaper than it used to be, I dont know what the big deal is.”

      The Big Deal is it used to be £0. Zero, no cost, no charge. Last time I went to school zero was less than two.

    2. Avatar photo Joris Bohnson says:

      £2 a day for something that was £0 before

  7. Avatar photo Guest says:

    Back to the bad old days of paying for data packages, I remember Three charging £7 or near enough a day for unlimited data 🙁

    Really no need to reintroduce roaming charges other then to increase profit to shareholders, don’t believe it has anything to do with Brexit or investing in the infrastructure.

    1. Avatar photo Benny Bullman says:

      “don’t believe it has anything to do with Brexit”.

      You’ve never heard of EU Roaming Regulation then? Have you been asleep for the last 4-5 years?

      https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/internet-telecoms/mobile-roaming-costs/index_en.htm

    2. Avatar photo Bob says:

      “don’t believe it has anything to do with Brexit”

      Never heard of EU Roaming Regulation then? Or have you been asleep for the last 4-5 years?

      https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/internet-telecoms/mobile-roaming-costs/index_en.htm

    3. Avatar photo Guest says:

      With regards to Brexit, the decision to now reintroduce roaming charges is not because we now left the EU but rather because the operators rather selfishly decided that profit is more important for their shareholders, if that wasn’t the case then why has O2 decided for now NOT to reintroduce roaming charges?

      There is no need to reintroduce the charges but they have done so just to make more money.

      As to the unneeded comment about sleeping the past few years, that is the fault of both the EU and the UK Govt for not insisting on keeping the previous roaming freedom that we had, the UK govt could easily have converted it to UK law but they refused just because they prefer the operators make more profits.

    4. Avatar photo Anonymous says:

      You seem to have difficulty understanding that if the UK was still in the EU then none of the UK providers would be charging for EU roaming. It’s really that simple.

    5. Avatar photo Optimist says:

      My mobile contract is with VMO2 which have scrapped charges for roaming in EU countries. Hooray.

      They’ve also just announced an inflation-busting price increase. Boo.

      But no reduction in charges for roaming in the rest of the world where 90% of the population lives.

    6. Avatar photo Anon1 says:

      The bit that tends to get forgotten is that Brexit also led to the removal of wholesale regulation. So the prices that visited networks in Europe charge EE/O2/Vodafone/Three are now unregulated, meaning the UK networks no longer have the protection on input pricing that enabled roam-like-at-home – and those wholesale prices have gone up.

      You can argue that to a degree it’s “wooden dollars” (how much Vodafone Spain charges Vodafone UK is all within Vodafone’s empire), but in practice the mobile operators have little control of which overseas network you roam onto, once its on the permitted networks list.

      So the cause is Brexit, but not only in the context of retail pricing as is usually cited.

  8. Avatar photo Matt cockhand says:

    This has little to do with brexit as why would the likes of three ect also remove feel at home for America and all the places they used to offer outside the EU also?

    1. Avatar photo Guest says:

      I agree, Three used to have Feel at Home which was popular but removing it was a own goal.

      For Vodaphone which has operations in various countries, they should be able to provide something similar.

    2. Avatar photo Tim says:

      Free/inclusive EU roaming has everything to do with Brexit. Brexit removed the EU roaming regulations which the UK mobile operators had no choice but to adhere to pre-Brexit. Any inclusive Roaming outside EU was always a commercial decision by the Uk operators rather than a regulatory decision.

  9. Avatar photo Fed Up says:

    Tim I disagree, the UK Govt could quite easily adapted the then EU roaming regulations to be part of UK law so to say operators post Brexit had no choice in the matter is rather liberal with the truth.

    The fact that this Govt has done nothing but give the country the worse possible outcome of any Brexit is simply down to how useless they really are.

    1. Avatar photo Tim says:

      “the UK Govt could quite easily adapted the then EU roaming regulations to be part of UK law”

      But they didn’t did they? You have more chance of the Gov’t sending you a money printing machine in the post. Maybe being in the EU wasn’t so bad after all eh?

  10. Avatar photo Rollers says:

    Seeing as it is only £2 per day, and two providers, O2 and Virgin Mobile are not re introducing roaming charges this rather seems to be greed on behalf of the operators, similar to the ones that operate a yearly inflation increase, which is another one I will move provider for. No doubt I will soon be moving to an O2 based provider

  11. Avatar photo Mike says:

    I wonder if Talkmobile will follow?, as this is also a Vodafone MVNO

  12. Avatar photo Grimreaper says:

    £2 a day for a few weeks of the year is nothing compared to the £1000s you are going to be out of pocket for the rest of the year when Energy, National Insurance, Council Taxes etc all go up. I’d just be more grateful that you can still afford a holiday!.

    1. Avatar photo Rollers says:

      Which means you would be daft to simply throw away any money that you didn’t need to. Look after the pennies and they look after the pounds. Save what you can, be prepared and move for the best deal

  13. Avatar photo Dan says:

    In response to queries on Twitter about charges for EU roaming, VOXI have now switched from their previous ‘no plans’ to ‘We are evaluating our roaming plans and will ensure that customers are informed of any changes we decide to make’.

    I suspect these changes will indeed be coming in April, but someone let the cat out of the bag early, so they can no longer use the ‘no plans’ wording.

  14. Avatar photo Mark says:

    I just buy a local sim when going abroad. Really is simple and cheaper. Take your passport to the shop. They register the sim to the passport (obviously to stop crime) and top it up.

Comments are closed

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