Roaming Charges in the UK and Europe Reduced

Mobile roaming charges come into play when you use your phone  outside Ireland. When you are in another country – your calls, texts and data are routed through a local telecoms provider’s network, instead of your home network.
Up until a couple of years ago – some of these roaming charges could be at a vastly increased cost.

Next year (From  June 2017)  all mobile roaming charges within the EU – including Ireland and the UK – will be stopped.  From that date you will pay the same amount for calls , texts and data anywhere in the EU as you pay here in Ireland.
Roaming charges in the EU have gradually been reduced  since 2007  – and from April 30th 2016 they have been amended again.

Roaming in the EU before April 30th 2016

Prior to April 30th 2016  – your phone company did not have to deduct any of your  roaming consumption from any of your  bundled  inclusive services. They could charge their normal “out of bundle” charges plus an additional roaming charge capped at the following rates :  19c per call minute, 6c per text , 20c per Mb

New Roaming Charging  Rules in the EU from May 2016

From May 2016 the new levels of EU roaming charges  are  based on the  price of the service that you would pay at home in Ireland  – with a roaming surcharge added if applicable.

Data Roaming  –  per Mb :  Price in Ireland plus 6.15c / Mb
Outgoing Calls :  Price in Ireland plus 6.15c/min
Incoming Calls :   1.4c/min
Texts Sent : Price in Ireland plus 2.46c

All these charges are including VAT

These new charges should mean a reduction in overall roaming costs for most people .

Any usage whilst roaming should  first be deducted from any inclusive services. So , if you have 500 call minutes on your contract/bundle  and you make a 5 minute call from say Spain to Ireland –  it should just reduce your remaining call minutes will fall by 5 minutes. If you are on PAYG or you are over your contract/bumdle limit – you should be charged the no more than you would be if you were making a call back in Ireland.

There seems to be some confusion over the maximum charges allowed  . This  document published by the European Commission  states that ….  “From 30 April 2016 onwards, the roaming fee equal to domestic price + €0.05 may not exceed €0.19 for voice and €0.20 for data. The roaming fee equal to domestic price + €0.02 may not exceed €0.06 for SMS.”
So  – if a provider currently charges 35c per min for “domestic” calls here in Ireland – it could be interpreted that the provider should only charge  19c per min whilst roaming . This would be strange – because it would mean the customer would be charged less while roaming !

Comreg have told us that  ” if providers do not apply a surcharge but set a stand-alone domestic price then this domestic price is allowed to exceed the EU cap during the transitional period which lasts until June 15th 2017.  “

It appears that the majority of Irish telecoms providers are doing it this way and just not adding any roaming charges if their domestic charge is already greater than or equal to the EU cap. For example – if 25c per min is the domestic rate – then the roaming rate will be the 25c per min  same because it is already greater that the 19c cap.

Three , Vodafone    Meteor  and Tesco are charging the “domestic rate” for roaming on PAYG without any inclusive calls or texts.

But iD Mobile seem to be  capping their out of  bundle and PAYG roaming charges at 19c per min ex VAT (see here). Their normal PAYG and out of bundle call charge is 35c per minute – but if you a roaming with them you will pay less (19c + Vat = 23.3c) . This is what all providers will have to do from June 2017.

Billpay customers with Tesco  now have  a “fair usage” roaming policy when roaming within the EU. This so called fair usage allowance is  only  30 call mins, 30 SMS and 30 MB of data per month !
Usage under this allowance is charged at the EU roaming surcharge i.e 6.15c per minute for outgoing voice calls, 1.4c per minute to receive a call, 2.46c per text and 6.15c per MB for data.  But – when a Tesco Mobile customer  exceeds these fair usage roaming allowances, they will be charged 30c per minute to make outbound calls, 1.4c per minute to receive a call, 14c per text and 8.15c per MB when using data.
It won’t take long for someone on holiday to use 30 minutes of calls and to start being chanrged at 30c per minute. With all the publicity about reduced roaming charges – some Tesco Mobile Ireland billpay customers might assume the roaming charges would be 6.15c all the time. But they might get a bigger bill than they were expecting after a trip to the UK or Europe.
This restrictive fair usage policy can’t be right – and Tesco Mobile customers should question it or go to another provider.

Maybe COMREG should be looking into this and telling them all exactly what to do ?