EE brings back European roaming charges after Brexit

EE has become the first mobile operator to announce roaming charges for UK customers using their smartphones in Europe.

It will charge new customers or those upgrading after July 7 £2 a day when they use their phones in 47 European countries, starting in January.

The BT-owned operator said the £2 levy was a “flat fee” that would include all data, texts and voice calls. Users will not be charged extra to use their phones in the Republic of Ireland.

EE said the levy would support investment in its UK network and customer services.

Analysts at Enders Analysis said EE’s move was “somewhat inevitable as current arrangements leave operators exposed to up to €75 of monthly wholesale charges”. It would be “hoping that the other mobile operators follow it and we rather suspect that they will”. 

The decision marks a U-turn for EE, which had previously said it had no plans to reintroduce European roaming charges.

On Wednesday O2 said its customers would face new charges when using their devices in the EU. British travellers will be charged £3.50 for each gigabyte of data that they use over 25GB from August 2, but will not be charged more for calls or texts.

The EU scrapped roaming charges across its member states in 2017 after the European Commission said that they amounted to a “market failure”.

O2 customers have since been able to use their UK allowances when visiting the 27 countries in the EU.

UK mobile operators had said they did not plans to reintroduce roaming charges after Brexit deal struck between Britain and the EU on Christmas Eve.

The trade deal states that both the EU and UK will encourage mobile phone operators to have “transparent and reasonable rates” when it comes to data roaming.

In another change, Three UK will restrict data usage in Europe from 20GB to 12GB a month from July 1.

A spokesman said: “The new fair use limit is still more than enough for holidaymakers to use their phone like they would if they were in the UK. There is no change to our surcharge, so data usage over 12GB (up to the customer’s allowance), will remain subject to a small fee of 0.3p per megabyte.”

Enders did not expect a return to the previous level of EU roaming charges: “Consumers are more conscious of the benefits of barely-limited EU roaming and with ‘free EU roaming’ now a headline benefit on almost all mobile packages in the competitive UK market, operators are treading carefully when seeking to deviate from that starting point.”

Vodafone said it did not plan to reintroduce roaming charges.