Vodafone to reintroduce European roaming charges for UK customers

People travelling to the Republic of Ireland will not pay any extra charges

Vodafone has announced that it will reintroduce roaming charges for UK mobile customers who travel in mainland Europe from January next year.

The fees will apply to new customers and those who change their contract from 11 August 2021, and will begin applying from 6 January 2022.

"If you're on a Pay monthly plan that started before 11 August 2021, there will be no change to your plan, or to the way you roam, while you stay on that plan," the company says on its website.

"This European roaming charge won't apply to Xtra Airtime Plans with 4 Xtra benefits."

Moreover, the company is "not making any changes to VOXI, Pay as you go plans, Talkmobile or Vodafone Basics at this time.

"If your plan doesn't include roaming in Europe, there will be a daily charge for using your phone in our European roaming zones," it added.

Affected customers will have the option to either pay £2 a day to use their monthly allowance of calls, data, and text messages in Europe, or pay £1 if they buy access in an eight- or 15-day bundle.

People travelling to the Republic of Ireland will not have to pay any extra charges regardless of their contract.

The move makes Vodafone the second mobile carrier in the UK - after EE - to reintroduce European roaming fees following Brexit.

Since June 2017, British travellers had been able to escape roaming fees in EU thanks to a ban on roaming charges.

But after Brexit, the UK had to negotiate a new trade deal with the bloc, which did not include free mobile roaming in region, allowing UK mobile carriers to reintroduce charges if they wished.

In July last year, the UK government launched a £93m "check and change" advertising splurge to prepare British people for changes to foreign travel after the Brexit deadline ends. It urged people to check whether their network carriers were planning to introduce roaming charges for Europe.

While all major carriers had previously said that they had no plans to introduce roaming charges, EE - which is owned by BT - became the first carrier in the UK to break the promise.

The company announced in June that its customers will have to pay £2 a day in 47 European destinations, starting from January 2022. It firm argued that introducing the fee would "support investment into our UK based customer service and leading UK network".

O2 has said that it will introduce an extra "fair use" charge for customers who use more than 25GB of data in a month when in an EU country.

Three has also reduced its "fair use" data limit from to 12GB a month when in Europe. Customers who cross the limit are required to pay £3 per extra gigabyte of data.