We have some great news everyone, as of June 15 any person travelling to an EU country from an EU country won’t have to pay roaming charges.
Now while we’d normally suggest you pop open the champagne we’ve actually got some terrible news as well.
You see in around 700 days none of this will mean anything to us because as of 2019 the United Kingdom is leaving the EU. So unless we can hammer out a deal that abolishes them for us individually, we’re going to be paying roaming fees again.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, as you’ve probably already noticed many of our networks already offer either significantly reduced roaming fees or have abolished roaming fees entirely for many of our major holiday destinations including the EU and America.
Of course with the exception of a few companies, free roaming comes as part of a premium monthly package, so if you’re on a pay-as-you-go SIM then the likelihood is that you’re going to have to wait and see whether Brexit really can deliver on all fronts.
The EU has been making slow but significant progress in terms of digital content as well.
The European Commission recently ruled that starting in 2018, any person within the EU will be able to watch their online entertainment subscriptions regardless of the country they’ve travelled to.
That means services like Sky Sports through Sky Go, Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video will all work when you’re going on holiday.
This is a major step forward for consumers who, up until now, have either been blocked from viewing their content or have been presented with localised content.
In the example of Netflix a person can only watch the content that’s available to local users, rather than the library that you would normally get here in the UK.
To help establish that you have a UK subscription to Netflix, the commission states that, “the online content service providers like Netflix, MyTF1 or Spotify will verify the subscriber’s country of residence by using means such as payment details, the existence of an internet contract or by checking the IP address.”
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