UK Gov Debates Surcharge-Free Mobile Roaming in Iceland and Norway

The government began debating the Draft Trade (Mobile Roaming) Regulations 2023 in parliament yesterday, which at present represents an extension of the UK-Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein free trade agreement that contains provisions for regulating (capping) mobile roaming charges at wholesale (calls, texts and mobile broadband).

At present, most of the market’s primary mobile network operators, except O2 (VMO2), have scrapped inclusive (free) EU roaming in favour of a return to charges (e.g. a surcharge of £2 per day is quite common) – often despite originally pledging that they wouldn’t perform such a U-turn.

The reality is of course that the EU-UK Trade Agreement didn’t guarantee surcharge-free EU roaming for the future (EU policy). Instead, it only contained vague “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.”

However, the Government are attempting to change that, at least for Iceland and Norway, where the new Free Trade Agreement (FTA) allows UK mobile operators to offer their customers “surcharge-free mobile roaming” by creating a mechanism to cap the rates operators charge each other.

The first debate took place on this yesterday, albeit while acknowledging that it does not guarantee that retail rates will be free or low to roam (that’s up to the mobile operators). But the legislation does give Ofcom the power to “enforce the caps on wholesale charges“, if deemed necessary.

Julia Lopez, Minister of State for DCMS, said:

“I have covered some of the questions in relation to wholesale and retail charging, but I appreciate the concerns that have been raised about that. It is on the face of the free trade agreement that the intention of the legislation is to reduce prices for consumers, and I hope that will give a level of reassurance in that regard.

As I have said, we are trying to get a light-touch regulatory approach. We think it is in the interests of mobile network operators to pass those savings on to consumers, but we will consider intervening if that is not the case. Ofcom is also doing a bit of work on data roaming, which relates to one of the points raised by the hon. Member for Pontypridd, in relation to transparency of charging.”

The related FTA also mentions Liechtenstein, but that country isn’t covered as they decided to opt out due their own mobile operators’ having complex commercial relationships with Switzerland. “Owing to its topography and limited geographical area, a significant part of its territory is co-supplied by masts in neighbouring Switzerland,” added Julia. Otherwise, the newly proposed wholesale rate caps are as follows.

Wholesale Caps (Maximum Rates)
The making of a telephone call: €0.032 per minute
The receiving of an SMS (text) message: Nil
The sending of an SMS message: €0.01 per SMS message
The transmission of data (Internet access): €2.50 per gigabyte

The rates are similar to the caps that the EU adopts for their own “Roam-like-at-home” regulations, which the UK can no longer avail. But we note that the EU cap for data is currently much lower at 2€/GB in 2022 and will fall to just 1€/GB from 2027.

As many people will recall, even when the UK was party to those regulations, most operators still imposed a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) to cap data usage on EU roaming (e.g. O2’s roaming limit is 25GB before charges for excess use kick-in), which is necessary to prevent abuse. This is partly because not all mobile operators in other countries support “unlimited data” plans.

In theory, such measures could also find their way into future trade agreements too, although Julia somewhat dodged that question by passing the buck back to the Department for Business and Trade. But she does “anticipate we will see similar provisions” as part of negotiations with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) nations (i.e. this might add Liechtenstein and Switzerland to the list).

As a side note. We know that these days almost any mention of Europe and Brexit seems to bring the political trolls out of the woodwork from both sides, which frequently descend into juvenile abuse. Comments that follow that trend will be deleted. We’d ask posters to keep it civil and on-topic.