Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Brexit may get messy, but free EU roaming is safe, U.K. government says

Andy Boxall
By

The government minister in charge of overseeing the United Kingdom leaving the European Union has said that even in the event of a “no-deal” Brexit (that is, the U.K. leaving the E.U. without a formal agreement in place with its closest neighbors), the recently introduced free data roaming and reduced charging plans will stay in place. Dominic Raab, Brexit secretary, has said several carriers have already agreed not to reintroduce charges, and the government wants to force other operators to do the same.

Expensive roaming charges were scrapped in June last year, but at the time there was confusion over what would happen after Brexit, and concern that networks would back out of the scheme. Currently, all EU citizens — which includes people living in the U.K. — pay the same amount for calls and messages made abroad as they do at home. Additionally, all mobile plans in the U.K. include the ability to use included data and minutes throughout the European Union. These are EU laws, and therefore will not be part of U.K. law after March 29, 2019.

At first glance this is good news, however, it wouldn’t be Brexit if there wasn’t confusion. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Raab said the government would, “legislate for a limit on roaming charges to make sure in a no-deal scenario we would protect British consumers.” While this is promising, the wording doesn’t clearly state there will be no change to the current structure, and could be taken to mean new U.K.-specific limits will be introduced.

The response from U.K. carriers is more encouraging. An EE spokesperson told Digital Trends:

“EE customers enjoy great value products and controls offering inclusive roaming in Europe and beyond, and we don’t have any plans to change these offers. We are working closely with government on this and hope they will put consumers at the top of their agenda in the Brexit negotiations to help ensure that U.K. operators can continue to offer low prices to our customers.”

According to the BBC, Vodafone and Three have agreed not to alter roaming prices, and Sky News adds O2 to the list. The Independent quotes O2 as saying it has no plans to change roaming charges, and is in discussion with the government regarding the situation, mirroring EE’s statement.

Raab’s comments come ahead of the U.K. government publishing 28 technical documents related to Brexit, and its impact on aspects of daily and business life, on September 13. These documents will include official statements on the continuation of EU roaming, and may provide more information than currently available.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
T-Mobile beats out Verizon for title of fastest mobile network in U.S.
Woman using phone while listening to headphones

For the first time in PCMag’s 12 years of testing mobile networks in the United States, T-Mobile has been named the fastest mobile network. With average download speeds of 162.3Mbps, T-Mobile greatly outperformed the competition in most cities. After years of lagging behind, how did T-Mobile turn it around?
Investing in C-band
In the race to provide 5G service, the major carriers pursued different strategies. Verizon and AT&T expanded their use of mmWave, a band of spectrum that provides high speeds but doesn’t travel far. Indoor places with heavy traffic like airports are perfect for mmWave, but it's unsuitable for outdoor broadband, especially in less-populated areas like the rural stretches between cities.

What did T-Mobile do differently? It bought Sprint. The acquisition gave T-Mobile access to a cache of midband airwaves, increasing their capacity to offer 5G service. T-Mobile was the only carrier with nationwide 5G that was considerably faster than 4G. In cities like Chicago, Las Vegas, New York, and Tucson, Arizona, T-Mobile 5G phones made use of 5G around 90% of the time.

Read more
Connected-car pioneer LoJack will shut down on March 15
Ford Police Interceptor 1

LoJack, a pioneer in the field of connected cars, will wind down its American sales operations in 2021. It will stop taking purchase orders in March, but it pledged to continue supporting stolen vehicle services indefinitely.

Founded in 1986, in an era when cars and computers were still largely mutually exclusive, LoJack rose to prominence by offering motorists a stolen vehicle recovery system that law enforcement officials could directly access. This was revolutionary in the 1980s, because even new luxury cars were relatively simple to steal with basic tools. LoJack's technology was extremely innovative: GPS wasn't commercially available yet, so its recovery system relied on a small radio transceiver that emits a signal every 15 seconds on a frequency set aside specifically for it.

Read more
AT&T subscribers can now get Spotify Premium for free — here’s how
Spotify IPO CEO

So you're looking for a way to score free Spotify Premium, huh? If you're an AT&T customer, you're in luck -- the carrier is offering a Premium subscription to all customers with an Unlimited & More plan, and a six-month trial to some who aren't.

Best of all, the promotion, which is a direct response to Verizon's offer of either a six-month trial or a free Apple Music subscription to its customers depending on the plan they're on, is available to both new and existing AT&T customers.
What is Spotify Premium?
Before we dive into the details, let's talk about Spotify Premium. Like the free version, it's home to millions of songs available on any device, but with the Premium version, they're available ad-free without the need to shuffle-play an artist, album, or playlist.

Read more