It is now the same cost to use your mobile phone while roaming in the EU (if your mobile contract resides in the EU), which sounds great on paper, however in reality this is just not the case.

Preface

In the summer of 2015 the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of ministers announced an agreement to end all mobile roaming charges when traveling within the EU. They proposed the same call charges as when in your home EU country and also the addition of access to internet content without discrimination, they called it strong net neutrality, which is basically a fancy way of saying roaming mobile data prioritisation will not be allowed, i.e. in the past larger corps have been granted prioritisation over smaller start up companies.

These changes where scheduled to take effect in June 2017 and would be part of the 'Digital Single Market', an extended plan from the European Commission to create a better environment for digital services to flourish. further reading can be found here digital single market

Media coverage

Media coverage of this event was huge, international, national and local news outlets covered this story, Andrus Ansip - Commission Vice president for the Digital-single-market project and Gunther H.Oettinger, Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society both applauded this change and openly spoke of the benefits to the EU Digital single market.

Did the change happen on in June 2017?

Yes

Are we as a consumer better of financially?

No only marginally.

Why is that?

The main reason is that a telecommunications company is a centralised for profit organisation and it is certainly not in their best interest to reduce roaming charges as this will have a direct impact on the contract revenue gained.

Almost certainly In your current business or personal mobile phone contract there will be a clause which will read something like this "We retain the right to adjust all or any of the tariff charges on giving you at least thirty (30) days' written notice prior to any adjusted charge being due to take effect. You may within thirty (30) days of receiving such written notice be entitled to terminate this Agreement by written notice to us and time shall be of the essence for the purpose of such notice".

This clause will essentially allow your mobile phone provider to increase non roaming call charges to counteract the change and mitigate the lost revenue.

For instance

Your mobile phone provider could hike up the call charges to Non-Geographical numbers (084, 087,09 etc.) Or they could increase your International calls (calls made from your home country too the EU and also calls from home to any ROW (Rest of world) country outside the EU. This could also just increase all of your out of bundle call and data charges on the whole account or do ALL of the above.

Make no mistake the commercial departments of most UK telecommunication companies will be looking at ways to negate this lost revenue and you will likely receive a letter of communication to raise call charges within the next month or so, and if you don't receive communication it is probably still worth contacting them to make sure they have not done so without communicating this with you first.

How to keep the reduction in cost

The best way is to act on any communication received from your current provider, If you receive a letter from your mobile provider informing you of a change in call charges, read your contract and if you have a clause which allows you to break contract then take the opportunity to shop around and see if there is a better tariff, deal or offer in the current market, Make sure to ask for any termination charges before making your final decision but chances are if you are in your last year on contract then your cancellation charges may be negligible and you may also have grounds for pushing your provider to waiver these charges due to the price rise, or they may just agree to keep your charges the same and swallow the lose to keep your custom.

Just food for thought :)

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Another post that may be of interest
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