EU mobile roaming charges to end on June 15th

Roaming fees will finally come to a complete stop on June 15th, 2017, meaning EU-registered mobile phones will offer free data roaming in any EU country for no extra cost.

European lawmakers have been working for years to end the practice and the welcome news will be beneficial to holidaymakers and frequent travellers around the European Union. The 'Roam at Home' program will level charges and also regulate additional fees previously associated with visiting non-EU continues that form part of the European Economic Area (EEA), such as Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Under the new agreement, wholesale charges for data will be capped at 7.7 euros per gigabyte from June 2017, going down to 2.5 euros per gigabyte in 2022.

Caps for making calls will decrease from 5 euro cents per minute to 3.2 euro cents per minute, while those for sending text messages will halve to 1 euro cent from 2 euro cents as of June, said the Council.

What this means for UK-based mobile service providers post-Brexit is yet to be determined, but until March 2019, companies like O2 and Vodafone will be operating under the same regulations.