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From June 15th 2017, roaming charges will cease to exist in the EU. Businesses and consumers will pay the same price for calls, texts and mobile data wherever they are travelling within the EU. This is great news for many of Spectrum’s customers who regularly travel within Europe for both business and leisure purposes.
In my X amount of years of adult life, I have taken a mobile phone overseas to other European destinations often. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it was not uncommon for consumers to shun the use of mobile phones on the near continent in favour of using payphones in hotels to call home to save money. Costs of using a mobile phone in Europe have decreased gradually but substantially since those days, and recently, consumers have been able to use their phones in these destinations with the confidence that they are not likely to receive the bill shocks that were all too common previously.
Most UK networks now have European tariffs in place whereby a consumer pays a daily access fee which enables them to access their UK bundled allowance for this pre-defined amount, but what you currently pay is down to your network provider and your chosen tariff. This is all set to change. The EU regulation means that from June 15th 2017, using your mobile phone within a EU country will be the same as using it at home and all UK networks must adhere to this. This is great news for regular travellers to EU destinations and the cost savings for businesses will be substantial.
Spectrum awaits communication from the UK networks about this; whether they in turn increase the cost of their UK tariffs to counteract this revenue loss remains to be seen – watch this space!
A further factor to consider is the effect of the UK’s impending withdrawal from the European Union. With Article 50 having been triggered by the UK government on March 29th 2017, the UK is set to leave the European Union approximately two years from this date in the spring of 2019. The retention of this benefit to the UK consumer is unknown beyond the official exit from the EU. We hope that the UK government are able to negotiate a term that continues to benefit the UK consumer when using their mobile device on the European continent.
