Trade Deal Between UK and Switzerland to Bring Free Mobile Roaming
Yesterday saw the UK Government sign one of its largest services-focused trade deals to date, this time with the beautifully mountainous Central European country of Switzerland, which among other things included an agreement to support surcharge-free international mobile roaming.
At present a lot of UK mobile operators already offer roaming options, either as an inclusive part of your mobile plan or as a paid add-on, although it’s worth noting that the data (mobile broadband) side of such allowances usually still come attached to a Fair Usage Policy (FUP); the latter is a fairly standard practice, even for many mobile operators within Europe.
The good news is that the new UK-Switzerland trade deal will officially scrap roaming charges between the two countries, although precisely when this will be introduced across the primary UK mobile operators of EE, O2 and VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) remains unclear.
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“The UK and Switzerland intend to include surcharge-free international mobile roaming. This would mean that UK tourists and business travellers would be able to use their mobile phones in Switzerland as part of their regular phone contract and without incurring extra roaming charges,” said the official announcement.
ABTA – The Travel Association Chief Executive, Mark Tanzer, said:
“We want travel to be as easy and smooth as possible, so this announcement includes great outcomes for British holidaymakers and business travellers, particularly the permanent arrangement for visa-free service supply for 90 days per calendar year.
Removing roaming charges would give people one less thing to think about before their trip and should make it cheaper to stay in touch too.
Plus, giving UK visitors access to Swiss eGates will make going through the airport smoother and quicker for tourists and business travellers alike. We know it’s not something that can just happen overnight, but it is encouraging to see that Switzerland has a plan in place to make it happen. Removing travel frictions like these with major European partners is so important for UK tourism and exports.”
The official government FTA announcement ranked free mobile roaming as no.4 on its list of top benefits from the deal.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Funny how roaming is trumpeted as such a massive part of this deal but when it came to brexit negotiations it didn’t seem to be seen as important at all.
As for roaming Switzerland is outside the EU and was never covered by the EU roaming regulations, so it’s slightly ironic that Switzerland and the UK will have a roaming agreement with each other but neither will have one with the EU. Brexit has nothing to do with this part of the new treaty, as it’s an expansion of the relationship that the UK had with Switzerland whilst it was an EU member.
Two different governments might have two different priorities.
But there’s also the fact that Swiss roaming is not covered by the EU rules (other EEA countries are included, Switzerland is not). I gather that it’s therefore a problem for those who live closer to the border than we do and they might be asked to pay a lot more than we do too. Ironically a true “brexit benefit” if we’re getting something that the EU doesn’t have!
That said some UK networks already treat Switzerland as EU/EEA for roaming purposes. My EE SIM just worked when I was last there, my Lebara SIM did not.
Brexit was a different story and EU will not let this to happen. Mainly because there is no such thing like “no roaming fees” in EU.
Good news for “financial” tourists. Although I doubt they were too bothered about roaming charges before this deal. 😀
This is an odd agreement. Roaming charges are not government tariffs that are within the governments power to waive – they are charges determined by operators. The EU regulations prohibited them for roaming between EU countries (and so never applied to roaming to Switzerland anyway). Implementing this will require the UK government to make a very specific intervention into operating pricing (both retail and wholesale), which I strongly suspect they will object to on principle. The government does not try to set prices this specifically for any other telco services.