Roaming changes. The new regulations are to protect against gigantic bills

The new EU regulations will apply for the next 10 years, ie until 2032. They will improve the regulations introduced in the EU in 2017, ensuring that travelers can use free roaming within the EU. The current system, commonly known as “Roam Like At Home” in English, has made roaming prices equal to national prices and protected citizens from extra charges for calls, texts or internet use when traveling in the EU. New – is to protect consumers even better.

5G at home and abroad

The new regulations will prevent operators from lowering the quality of services abroad. This means that consumers who usually use, for example, 5G services in a country, will also be able to use 5G roaming services, provided that they are available in that country. Until now, as reported by the European consumer organization BEUC, slowing down data transfers when roaming has been a common practice of many telecommunications companies, which have transferred users to lower-quality networks. The O2 chain, which offers its services, among others, admitted to it. in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ireland. Anyway, as revealed by EU Eurobarometer surveys, 33 percent. of respondents who traveled abroad experienced slower mobile internet speed than in the country, and 28 percent. indicated a lower standard of the network abroad (eg 3G instead of 4G). Such practices will no longer be possible unless the operator is technically unable to provide the same quality of service. In this situation, however, he will be required to clearly inform customers.

– Gone are the days when consumers did not use their phones in another EU country for fear of a shocking bill upon returning home. The new rules will now introduce additional improvements. Such as a solution to the problem of the lower quality of services that consumers sometimes experience when roaming because the operator puts them on 3G instead of 4G, comments Ursula Pachl, BEUC vice president.

Consumer protection

The improved regulations are also intended to protect consumers from unexpectedly high bills. Thus, travelers can unknowingly face very high costs when their phone connects to a network other than the landline, for example when traveling by plane or boat, or if they connect to a non-EU operator’s network. It is about such situations when a person is, for example, at the Polish-Ukrainian or Polish-Belarusian border and his phone automatically connects to the local operator’s network. So far, such a connection, even several minutes long, was associated with surprisingly high costs. The new regulation obliges operators to clearly warn and inform customers and to automatically terminate such a service when the cost reaches EUR 50 or some other predetermined limit. Operators will also be able to offer additional services, such as the option to opt out of roaming on airplanes and ships.

The regulations are also intended to prevent operators from charging additional fees for service calls.

– When traveling abroad, you may need to call customer service, an information desk or the insurance company. While these services are often free or cheaper when used domestically, consumers often incur shocking charges when making calls from abroad. From now on, operators will be required to adequately inform their customers about additional charges abroad to enable them to make informed decisions regarding the use of such services, EU officials explain.

Time for cheaper connections inside the EU?

The regulation also provides citizens with better and free access to emergency notifications along with the location of the caller. Until June 2023, operators are required to automatically inform citizens via SMS about the possibility of accessing emergency services, e.g. via the single European emergency number 112 or other alternative means of access for people with disabilities, such as real-time text communication or access to applications. Telecommunications companies will also benefit from the regulations, as the new regulation provides for lower wholesale charges for network access – and so, for example, in the field of data transfer, they are to drop from EUR 2 / GB in 2022 to EUR 1 / GB in 2027.

However, consumer organizations emphasize that the EU has still not resolved the problem of high charges for voice or text calls to numbers abroad within the EU. And yes, connection fees, e.g. from a Polish number to a German number, remain high.

– Consumers continue to pay high prices when calling from home to someone who lives in another EU country. In the European single market, there is no justification for these disproportionate costs. The price paid by consumers should be closer to the costs of domestic calls and reflect the real costs incurred by telecommunications operators in connection with an intra-EU call, believes the deputy head of BEUC.

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