When traveling abroad, beside telephony and SMS messages you can use your phone, or a stick connected to your laptop to send and receive multimedia messages, video calls, emails, or you can surf/browse the Internet.
The tariffs for roaming outside the European Economic Area (EEA) are not regulated. Only tariffs for the roaming services within the EEA are regulated on EU level based on Roam like at home.
Thus, within a fair use limit, the data (MB/GB) consumed in roaming within the EU/EEA will be deducted from the domestic resources (MB/GB) available in the tariff plan, without further charges. However, there is a fair use limit for data roaming in the EU/EEA, per billing cycle. After exceeding this limit you may incur surcharges. Details are available under item 10 in the section dedicated to Roam like at home.
When it comes to roaming services outside the EEA, the providers propose various commercial offers, at various prices, and they often launch special offers for the holiday season. Ask your provider about the applicable costs if you choose to activate this service. Based on the anticipated frequency and duration of using this service during your planned travels outside the EEA, carefully analyse the various offers and choose the tariff plan that is best suited to your needs.
You should check all the details and costs involved by the data roaming services:
- price of the chosen subscription/add-on;
- connection fee (if any);
- amount of data included in the subscription/add-on;
- surcharges applicable where exceeding the data volume included in the subscription/add-on and the charging method (e.g. per 1 MB, per 10 KB, etc.)
In order to avoid incurring considerable surcharges following the usage of roaming internet access services, your provider must make available to your at least one data ceiling.
If you have not chosen such a ceiling, a default 50 EUR ceiling (VAT not included) will be applied. Once your cumulated data roaming consumption (MB/GB) throughout a billing cycle (usually one month or 30 days) has reached this ceiling, further data roaming services should not be available for consumption without your utter consent.
When you are roaming, irrespective of the country, your provider has the obligation to send you the following notifications:
a) when the cumulated data roaming (MB/GB) consumed in one billing cycle have reached 80% of the ceiling (e.g. when you reached 40 Euro, VAT not included, for the 50 Euro ceiling, VAT not included);
b) when the ceiling is to be exceeded, and to indicate the procedure you should follow in order to express your consent to keep using data roaming (MB/GB), as well as the applicable tariffs.
After sending the second notification, the provider has the obligation to immediately stop the provision and billing of data roaming (MB/GB) if you have not given your utter consent for continuing or resuming the provision of the data roaming service.
If you have chosen to stop receiving notifications regarding the data roaming ceiling, you still have the right to change your mind, at any time and free of charge, and your provider must resume sending notifications.
In some countries outside the EU/EEA, the data roaming ceiling may not be applied due to objective reasons, such as the provider’s impossibility to monitor service usage in real time. When you travel to such countries, your provider has the obligation to inform you, free of charge, by sending an SMS on the fact that the data ceiling is not available in the respective country.
About what, how and where one can complain
If you have a complaint regarding the provision and billing of the internet access service, you should first address it to your provider.
Should this not help solving your complaint, you may address to ANCOM, following the steps available here.
