Three, the mobile network, has reintroduced roaming charges for UK customers travelling to the EU. The company announced the news months ago, but the change only came into effect this week.
It means that anyone who took out their contract (or upgraded) on or after October 1, 2021 now has to pay £2 per day to use their regular allowance as they would at home. Those who took out their contracts before that date are safe and do not need to pay the daily charge.
Three has 9.3 million active UK customers, but not all of these will be affected. A company representative told Bristol Live it would not disclose how many people were affected by the charges as it is "commercially sensitive".
Read more - Three, O2, Vodafone, EE: Mobile networks' EU roaming charges explained
The charge does not apply to Ireland or the Isle of Man, and there is no change for pay as you go customers. When travelling to the rest of the world, the charge is £5 per day.
Three says the charge will be incurred automatically "when you arrive" in an EU country, as well as Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. However, there is a roaming cap of £45 per month, so nobody pays more than that for roaming charges in a single month; you can ask for this limit to be changed by contacting Three.
It's also worth noting that roaming is subject to Three's fair use policy, which means you can only use 12GB of your monthly data allowance when roaming. Beyond this point, you can continue to use data but doing so will incur a further surcharge.
Roaming charges within the EU were outlawed for all European Union countries in 2017. That included the UK, even though we'd voted to leave the EU by then, as we had not technically left at that point.
All the major networks said in the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum that they did not plan on reintroducing roaming charges. However, the trade deal struck by the UK and EU for post-Brexit cooperation did not preserve the rights of UK citizens to roam abroad without incurring costs.
That means it is down to businesses to set their own roaming charges, and many have taken advantage of that freedom to reintroduce the charges for UK customers. O2 is now the only remaining major UK network to have not reintroduced the charges.
