EE says it will add a £2 roaming charge in Europe for new customers starting January 2022, the first UK operator to reintroduce roaming charges after Brexit
Anthony Reuben / BBC :
Context & Ripple Effects
The EU spent nearly a decade forcing this charge out of existence: after regulators first delayed the ban in 2015, a deal landed in early 2017 and by June of that year roaming charges were dropped across all 28 EU countries for regular users. Leaving the EU took UK customers outside that regulated regime, and EE is the first operator to act on it.
First-order effects
- New EE customers taking contracts from January 2022 will pay an extra £2 per day to use their phones in Europe, while the operator keeps existing customers on current terms for now.
- UK travellers lose the flat 'roam like at home' treatment they held under the EU rules when the UK was still covered.
Second-order effects
- Competitors are forced to pick a side: Three follows with its own £2/day EU charge from May 2022 alongside Vodafone, while O2 holds free roaming as an add-on perk — turning what was a regulated universal into a plan-tier marketing lever.
- Free EU roaming shifts from industry baseline to a premium selling point, giving O2 a differentiation angle against EE, Vodafone, and Three at renewal time.
Third-order effects
- If the three-charge/one-free split holds, EU roaming hardens into a permanent price discriminator between UK tariffs rather than a regulated entitlement, widening the gap between UK and EU consumer mobile costs as regulators on each side diverge.
The trend: Brexit is unwinding the EU's cross-border consumer telecoms protections one operator decision at a time, converting regulated rights back into commercial upsells.