Using a mobile phone at no extra cost when traveling within the European Union will probably still be possible until 2032 at least. The current agreement expires in 2022.
On December 9, the European Union Council and Parliament provisionally agreed to extend the “roam like at home” scheme.
The scheme allows people to travel across EU countries without extra roaming fees when making phone calls, sending texts and browsing the web.
However, the current roaming regulation has an expiration date. The scheme expires on 30 June 2022. It first came into force only in 2017.
However, negotiators reached a provisional agreement to further extend it until 2032. Users would then be able to access the same quality of service abroad with no additional costs of what they pay at home.
It means that telecom companies are forced to offer the same roaming quality as what is provided domestically.
Members of Parliament secured a provision to avoid a reduction in the quality of services, for instance, by switching from a 4G to a 3G connection.
Data charges between operators capped by law
For the scheme to be renewed, data needs to be charged at a rather homogeneous price across EU member state operators. The same principle goes for price on calls or text messages.
The agreement includes a price at which each operator charges each other when their users use other networks when traveling. Wholesale roaming charges are capped at 2 euros per Gigabyte from 2022 until progressively going down to €1 in 2027.
To adopt the roam-like-at-home regime in 2017, price caps decreased from €50/Gb to €7.7/Gb.
In the summer of 2018, the scheme’s first year was applied, roaming consumption was 12 times higher than in 2017.
The informal agreement will now have to be endorsed by the Parliament and the Council to come into force.
