Vodafone to bring back EU roaming fees from January

Most customers on Vodafone pay monthly contracts will be charged £2 per day for a single day pass if they want to use their handset in the Europe Zone.

Passes can be purchased for multiple days to bring the cost down to £1 a day, with 8-day and 15-day passes available.

Pay as you go customers and those on 4 Xtra plans will not see any change to their EU roaming arrangements.

Credit: kailim/Shutterstock.com

Roaming passes

From 6 January 2022, most customers who joined Vodafone, upgraded their plan or altered it on the 11 August 2021 or afterwards will be subject to the following European roaming charges:

• £2 for a single day pass
• £8 for an 8-day pass
• £15 for a 15-day pass

These passes can be used in Vodafone's Europe Zone which incorporates 49 countries including EU member states and other locations such as Gibraltar, San Marino, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

All roaming is subject to a 25GB fair use policy, so customers will not be able to use more than that amount of data outside the UK, even if they are on unlimited data plans.

Customers who started their Vodafone pay monthly plan before 11 August 2021 will not be required to pay extra for European roaming until they upgrade their mobile plan or device.

Zone A covering the Republic of Ireland and the Isle of Man are included with all plans that allow roaming (not Vodafone Basics).

Other plans

The new EU roaming arrangements detailed above come into force for most personal and business customers from 6 January 2022.

However, there will be no adjustments to the roaming within plans offered by other brands VOXI and Talkmobile.

In addition, those on Data Xtra plans with 4 Xtra benefits will not see any additional charges to their roaming and they can use their allowance in the 49 countries of the Europe Zone as usual in 2022.

Yet it's worth noting these plans are often significantly more per month anyway, so customers would only benefit if they were getting full use of all the features.

To illustrate, the cost of an Unlimited Max SIM only plan with Vodafone right now is £30 while Unlimited Max with 4 Xtra benefits is £37 per month. Over the length of a 24-month contract, that's an extra £168 for the following benefits:

• Inclusive roaming in 83 worldwide destinations
• Unlimited Picture Messages
• Device Care
• £3.50 per month off Smartwatch Connectivity

These benefits will be worth it for some, but most customers who want to use their phone in Europe would be better paying for passes as and when they need them.

Roaming in Europe

Vodafone are facing a backlash for re-introducing EU roaming charges for most customers from January 2022 after saying just seven months ago they had no plans to do so.

However, they aren't the only network to make changes to their roaming charges from January 2022.

EE confirmed back in June that customers would be charged £2 per day for using their allowance in Europe from next year.

O2 have tweaked their roaming limits to implement a 25GB cap on roaming within their Europe Zone, a move they said at the time would affect less than 1% of their customers.

Free mobile roaming was introduced in the European Union in 2017, but it was not included in the Brexit withdrawal agreements and so networks are under no obligation to keep free roaming available to their customers.