MSE News: EU 'ban' on mobile roaming fees WON'T stop firms charging some extra

hunkyg

I have an O2 Monthly Contract.

O2's "Roaming in Europe" help page says:

What’s included at no extra charge?
Making calls and sending texts within our Europe Zone (excluding the UK), to any other country in our Europe Zone (including the UK).
Receiving calls and texts in our Europe Zone.
Using your monthly data allowance whilst in our Europe Zone.

---

Reading today's O2's "Consumer Fair Usage Policy | Terms and Conditions:

quote --(

use our services in our Europe Zone (excluding the UK) for periodic travel, like holidays or short breaks. If you’re not genuinely using our services for periodic travel we may have to charge you for, or suspend you from, using our services in our Europe Zone (excluding the UK). Your data usage may also be limited in our Europe Zone (excluding the UK) at a lower level than you data allowance in the UK if you’re a Pay As You Go customer. Once you go over this limit you’ll be charged. For these limits and charges please see help/pay-as-you-go/roaming-in-europe.

What to avoid: Using our services for the first time outside of the UK, using a large volume of your allowance (be that text, calls or data) in our Europe Zone (excluding the UK), or using our services outside of our Europe Zone (excluding the UK) for prolonged periods which don’t follow reasonable consumer holiday and travel patterns and behaviour. If you use our services outside the UK in our Europe Zone for 60 or more days in any four month period this is likely to be deemed to be an unfair use of our services.

Remember that this isn’t an exhaustive list of how you could be breaching our Consumer Fair Usage Policy. Other activities which we reasonably believe to be outside of legitimate consumer use may also be subject to the terms in this Fair Usage Policy.

)--end quote.

So it's not fully defined.

O2 also say they currently have NO 4G roaming agreements with any EU providers, so it will be slower 3g connectivity for data usage.

Frozen_up_north

For those who haven't seen Three's announcement on other threads here, this is what they state for their "advanced" SIM contract users:

https://www.threemicrosites.co.uk/euregulation/nonessentialplan

For their "essential" plan contracts:

https://www.threemicrosites.co.uk/euregulation/essentialplan

And for PAYG:

https://www.threemicrosites.co.uk/euregulation/payg

adindas

I have TalkTalk Mobile which which come together with my broadband deal I believe is using Vodafone network.

Will I be able to use my allowance roaming free after June 15 ?

Thanks

boatman

Going to be interesting to see how this pans out for those often in Europe, be it flight crew, ferry workers, truck drivers and those on business.

Tammykitty

boatman wrote: »

Going to be interesting to see how this pans out for those often in Europe, be it flight crew, ferry workers, truck drivers and those on business.

And Northern Ireland customers - my phone will be on a southern Irish signal nearly every day (although I don't necessarily use it while on the "roaming" signal)

Frozen_up_north

boatman wrote: »

Going to be interesting to see how this pans out for those often in Europe, be it flight crew, ferry workers, truck drivers and those on business.

Some of the networks have given fairly clear info on how the above works, for example Three state the following:

we may monitor your usage and presence. We’ll look at the balance of your roaming and domestic (UK) activity over 120 days: if you spend a majority of your time abroad and consume more abroad than at home over the 120 days, we have the right to add a small surcharge to your usage

boatman

Frozen_up_north wrote: »

Some of the networks have given fairly clear info on how the above works, for example Three state the following:

we may monitor your usage and presence. We’ll look at the balance of your roaming and domestic (UK) activity over 120 days: if you spend a majority of your time abroad and consume more abroad than at home over the 120 days, we have the right to add a small surcharge to your usage

Trouble with that is, up to now people have avoided or limited their use while abroad. But because they now have access to 'free' calls back to UK may well use it far more to speak to people they are away from, after all that is the point in a phone. So you may well use it more abroad than at home because you are living with them.