End of retail roaming charges in the EU

15 June 2017 marked the end of retail roaming charges across the EEA. The European Commission's 2015 regulation on roaming and net neutrality (the "Roaming Regulation") set out a new retail pricing regime for regulating roaming services with the objective of ending retail roaming charges by that date - this now allows users to use their domestic mobile phone subscriptions when periodically travelling abroad (subject to a fair use policy).

The Roaming Regulation also required the Commission to review the wholesale roaming market and propose wholesale roaming charges to enable the end of retail roaming charges. Rules setting out maximum wholesale roaming charges to be imposed on telecommunications operators have since been approved largely in an effort to protect those operators going forward.

To help ensure a consistent application of the new rules by national regulatory authorities and to improve consumer understanding, the Office of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications ("BEREC") has also published revised guidelines on how the new retail roaming charges will apply - Retail Roaming Guidelines and Wholesale Roaming Guidelines.

The Commission has published FAQs and a factsheet on the end of roaming charges.