Vodafone brings back roaming charges... despite vowing not to

VODAFONE has become the second mobile phone company to reintroduce roaming charges for UK users travelling in mainland Europe.

New and upgrading customers will have to pay up to £2 a day to use their monthly allowance of data, calls and text messages abroad from January.

The telecoms giant has joined EE in reneging on its pledge not to bring back the fees – with experts warning their rivals are now likely to follow suit.

Travellers from the UK had been able to escape roaming charges after they were banned throughout the European Union in 2017. But it was not included in the Brexit trade deal brokered in December last year, meaning users could be charged again.

Despite this, all four of Britain’s biggest networks – Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three – said they had no plans to reintroduce them.

EE became the first to break ranks in June, announcing it would apply a £2 daily charge to 47 European destinations from January. Vodafone said the new rules will come into effect for any new and upgrading customers from tomorrow, though the charges will not apply until January.

From then, affected customers can pay £2 a day to use their allowance in Europe, or £1 if bought in an eight or 15day bundle. The Republic of Ireland will be exempt.

Defending the company’s decision, Vodafone’s UK chief executive Ahmed Essam yesterday said fewer than half the network’s users travelled beyond the Republic of Ireland in 2019.

He said: ‘The reality is that including roaming – a service that costs us money to provide – in every plan means more than half of our customers are paying for something that they don’t use. ‘What’s free for one person usually has to be paid for by someone else. So we think it’s fairer to give people more choice over what they pay for.’ Karen Egan, from Enders Analysis, said she expected O2 and Virgin Media to ‘follow suit’, although whether Three would also join them was ‘more uncertain’. Mobile virtual network operators, which do not own the infrastructure but lease that of the four major carriers, were likely to reintroduce roaming charges, she said. There are around 75 such companies operating in the UK, such as Tesco Mobile and Sky, which set their own retail prices.

Miss Egan said: ‘This move is somewhat inevitable as current arrangements leave operators exposed to up to €75 (£64) of monthly wholesale charges.’

Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at Uswitch. com, said: ‘It’s disappointing for consumers to see that the situation looks to be shifting, with a risk that roaming at no additional cost could soon be a distant memory for UK residents.’

While both firms have not revived the daily fee, Three has cut its fair-use data limit abroad from 20GB a month to 12GB and O2 allows a maximum of 25GB.