Due to the fact that Theresa May has planned to quit the digital market of EU apart from Brexit, thereby threatening a rejuvenation of the new mobile roaming charges, the holiday travellers and the business makers are worried about getting back their bad old days yet again. Though it is true that the issue of roaming charges wasn’t included in the 2016 June ballot which witnessed the UK to vote by a very narrow margin to leave the EU, Theresa May, the PM announced that UK will leave the digital market too. Then what’s going to happen to the avid travellers who wished to visit mainland Europe?
After several years of changing decisions regarding the obstacles which rose to make the consensus of eliminating mobile roaming charges a stark reality, this question was yet again put to rest in the year 2015 when the ministers took to phasing out roaming tariffs. The question of being able to make free international calls seemed like a distant reality then.
Will there be no higher charges for roaming?
It was in June 2016 the EU Roaming Regulations predicted that there couldn’t be any higher charge than the domestic charges for people who were moving across Europe and other EU nations. For the travellers who were badly hit by hefty costs of roaming, this was a revolutionary step indeed.
But is this going to remain after Brexit?
In case the UK had to decide whether it wished to continue as an EU member state or to newly become an EEA state just as Norway did, the roaming charges would continue being the same as what they are today. However, in any other scenario, the services on roaming will stop among the UK customers as soon as Brexit takes place. This clearly implies the fact that the people who had UL subscriptions would require paying a considerably higher amount than what they have to pay today in the EU and same is the case with the people in the UK.
The Great Repeat Bill could restrain the retail prices within the UK but it won’t be able to dictate the wholesale charges which the European Union network operator charges for the subscribers who roam within the EU. The present retail prices for roaming can’t be sustained in the case the wholesale costs are permitted to run wild. A free trade agreement also was done as a part of the Article 50 process through which you could avert this issue in case wholesale prices are arbitrated as post Brexit UK.
Network operators look forward to maintain status quo
The ultimate good news for the travellers is that among the 4 biggest operators in the UK, there seems to be very low wish to regain roaming charges. Both Vodafone and Three had committed never to introduce tariffs on roaming and as according to a statement which confirmed this, they even cautioned that the effect of Brexit on roaming would not be applied for some time now.
However, the lawmakers think that it is too early to determine the implications of Brexit on roaming rules. It is being predicted that the competition will drive in the best impacts for the customers. They also added that the plans will bring about an alteration in the roaming charges. Their main goal is to free up their customers and provide them with 100% roaming throughout the world and to charge them no added cost. All sorts of unfair roaming charges will be done away with.
So, it can be seen that the UK travellers will be sailing smoothly with regards to the mobile roaming charges post Brexit.
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