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Glossary of summaries

Roaming

Roaming is the situation when individuals travel to European Union (EU) Member States other than that where their mobile phone’s subscriber identity module (SIM) card was issued, and can call, message and use mobile data without extra costs. In other words, they can ‘roam like at home’.

The EU’s original rules on roaming were set out in Regulation (EU) No 531/2012. The regulation ended roaming charges when travelling within the EU and set in place safeguards to ensure that mobile telephone operators were protected against abuses and could sustain the new roaming rules without increasing domestic prices. An amending act, Regulation (EU) 2017/920, introduced rules limiting the amount that mobile telephone operators may charge one another for roaming (known as wholesale roaming) in the EU.

Since the 2012 legislation expired in June 2022, it has been replaced by new legislation, Regulation (EU) 2022/612, which is valid until 2032.

Regulation (EU) 2022/612 extends and improves roaming services with additional benefits. Individuals will have more information about potential charges from calling value-added services (such as helpdesks, insurance companies or airlines). They will also be better protected from inadvertent and excessive charges.

The legislation also:

  • regulates roaming service conditions and wholesale access to public mobile communications networks;
  • increases transparency and improves access to information on charges;
  • increases transparency for users of non-regulated roaming services, such as on board ships or aircraft;
  • improves mobile internet quality by ensuring consumers have access to faster networks abroad, just as they do at home.

Mobile network operators must meet all reasonable requests for wholesale roaming access, in particular in a manner that allows the roaming provider to replicate the retail mobile services offered domestically where it is technically feasible to do so on the visited network.

Mobile network operators may refuse requests for wholesale roaming access only on the basis of objective criteria such as technical feasibility and network integrity. Commercial considerations are not grounds for refusing requests for wholesale roaming access in order to limit the provision of competing roaming services.

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