With our European Union membership now a thing of the past, how will the Brexit effect roaming charges when visiting EU countries?
Yesterday, Britain voted to secede from the European Union, a process that is estimated to take around two years. While there won’t be any major changes happening in the immediate future, it’s important to realise what this could mean for your humble phone contract.
The European Union has been successfully tackling excessive roaming charges since 2007, when they began to steadily lower them from the expensive initial charges. The current EU roaming regulations apply to all 28 members plus the three non-EU members. Things included in the legislation are regulated billing intervals and free incoming text messages. More recently, data allowances have also been regulated to a flat rate of only 0.05 more than the standard home network charge.
In 2014, a proposed legislation was passed that aimed to completely abolish end-user roaming charges. This included a net neutrality deal, which aimed to treat internet content fairly and equally, with blocking only allowed for clear reasons. The legislation will effectively create a single market for flat charges across the European Union when it eventually gets passed in 2017.
Until then, networks have been trying to find ways that offer a more even roaming policy. Three has an international roaming policy called “Feel At Home”, which allows the use of your mobile device abroad at no extra cost. This includes calls and texts (up to 5,000 texts and 3,000 minutes), plus up to 12GB data (all-you-can-eat data plans are capped at this amount). It covers 19 countries worldwide, including several European Union member states. Quite how the implications of a Brexit will effect this are unclear, but we did speak to Three for comment on situation. Currently, the mobile network has no word on what will happen, but they did say that a comment on the situation will be made soon, so we’ll keep our ears open.
Other networks who are toying with the idea of international roaming deals include Vodafone, who unveiled ‘free’ roaming in 40 European countries back in May, and Tesco Mobile, who offers an EU roaming service. The latter has stated that the bundle would only be available through the summer, leading some to believe that the supermarket giant was testing the waters ahead of the planned referendum. A spokesperson for Tesco Mobile commented: “The EU decision does not affect Tesco Mobile’s Home From Home service. Our customers can still enjoy using their mobiles in 31 countries just like they do at home, this summer.”
While there is some reassurance there for existing customers, it’s interesting to see that they still won’t commit to a roaming service past the summer months, leading us to believe that they are assessing how the situation turns out over the next few months.
As for Vodafone, things are a little less cut and dry. The company has expressed its worry at the referendum and hinted at the fact they may move headquarters if a Brexit was to take place. The company stated today that it was committed to supporting its British customers but that: “It is too soon to form a view on the implications of the referendum outcome for the domicile of the Group.”
Unwinding the bunch of EU laws from our own will be a long job, so companies are unlikely to completely panic just yet. There’s also every chance that the UK could negotiate a deal with Brussels to implement some of the proposed roaming abolition legislation in 2017, though it would likely come with baggage similar to what Switzerland have experienced adopting their own model.
It’s also worth noting that the UK is a highly competitive market and attempting to raise prices would need solidarity between the networks. For a sole mobile network to drastically raise their roaming plan costs would be a huge gamble that could potentially price themselves out of the market. CCS consumer insights Principal Analyst Kester Mann believes that it would be unfeasible for companies such as Three to change their focus.
“I think that given what Three has done, and with the takeover of O2, it would be very difficult for them to backtrack on their roaming plans.
What’s interesting about Three is that ‘Feel at Home’ includes countries outside the European Union. That shows a commitment to low-cost roaming plans as an overall strategy.”
Non-EU countries actually make up over half of the total territories within the ‘Feel at Home’ plan, signalling that the network hasn’t completely hedged it bets on just Europe. In the event that mobile networks did decide to increase roaming costs as a direct result of the Brexit, there’s still every chance that Ofcom would step in and overrule the decision amid concerns that it’s unfair on the consumer.
Ultimately, until the United Kingdom invokes article 50 in the Treaty of Lisbon, we’re still in the European Union. This means that we’ll continue to abide by and contribute to EU legislation until things change. The official Out campaign has even said there is no need to trigger Article 50 before talks with officials have taken place… this alone could last years. For businesses and the mobile sector, it gives them a small window of time to address and prepare any contingencies needed before the country officially hands over the keys. How will the Brexit effect roaming charges? Currently not much… but the real challenge will come in the next few years.
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