9According to the rules that provide for the end of roaming charges in June 2017, on the 5th of September the Commission presented a draft for an implementing act defining the specific parameters of fair use policy that will prevent abusive usage.

Based on the results of a public consultation, the Commission proposes the following rules:

  • Duration of the “Roam Like At Home” (RLAH) tariff

Customers must be able to roam at domestic prices, and therefore take advantage of the RLAH agreement, for a maximum of 30 consecutive days – and for a total of 90 throughout the year;

  • Frontier workers

Frontier workers who log on at home every day cannot be considered to be engaged in anomalous, permanent roaming: that means that the 90-day/30-day rules do not apply to customers who connect to a foreign network as well as their home network within one day. This protects subscribers who travel to another country on a daily basis for work, or who live near a border;

  • Bundles

For open mobile phone bundles (i.e. those which have unlimited or very high volumes) roaming customers should be able to consume at domestic prices at least the average volume consumed on their bundle: that means that customers will be allowed to use the average volume of service (either minutes, texts, or data) consumed by all customers on that same tariff without incurring roaming charges. With this, the Commission hopes to prevent roaming providers picking up the tab for very heavy data users

  • Measures against permanent roaming

Under the proposed rules, customers will be entitled to 90 days of free roaming per year but they will be obliged to connect to their roaming provider’s home network at least once every 30 days. These measures aim to stop permanent roaming, where people buy a SIM card in a country where prices are cheaper and then use it full-time in their home market

  • Surcharges

Beyond fair use policy, a mobile operator may apply a surcharge that cannot exceed the corresponding wholesale roaming cap. The Commission has proposed 4 cents/min, 1 cent/SMS, 0,85 cents/MB (the proposal has to be adopted by the Parliament and Member States in the current wholesale roaming review)

The Commission said it needs to consult with BEREC and Member States before the rules can be finalised and adopted. Those rules may not apply in UK.

 

EU MNOS please take part in ROCCO’s EU Roaming Regulation Survey here many thanks.

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