Vodafone will be bringing back roaming charges for UK users traveling in Europe, after originally saying it would not do so. Vodafone is the second mobile provider to do so in the post-Brexit era.
New and upgrading customers on “selected plans” will be charged at least £1 per day to use their mobile phones in the EU. The rules will be reinstated for both new and upgrading customers from Wednesday, August 11, though the charges will not kick in until January.
BBC News reports:
“Existing customers will not be impacted by these changes while they remain on their current price plan, and roaming in the Republic of Ireland will still be included for all customers,” Vodafone said.
As of January, customers will pay £2 a day to use their allowance in Europe, or £1 if bought in an eight or 15-day bundle. Limits of 25GB of roaming data a month apply.
Before the UK’s exit from the European Union, mobile customers didn’t have to pay roaming charges when using their phones while visiting other EU countries. Calls, texts, and data used in EU countries were considered equivalent to domestic use from 2017 on.
Carrier EE was the first to announce its new roaming charges in June. EE’s charges go into effect in January 2022, and at first, only apply to new EE customers or customers upgrading their plan and contract from July 7, 2021.
Originally, the largest UK mobile operators – EE, O2, Three, and Vodafone – announced that they had no plans to reintroduce roaming charges post-Brexit, but since then they have all announced changes. O2 allows a roaming data cap of 25GB, with any data used over that charged at £3.50 per gigabyte, while Three has cut its data cap from 20GB a month to 12GB.
(Via MacRumors)