Each year, millions of us leave the UK to go on holiday but we tend not to use our phones the way we do at home because of the high cost of using a mobile phone abroad.
When you travel, your call connects to a local network, which charges us to provide the service. Outside Europe there are no limits to what an operator can charge for roaming.
High consumer prices are driven by high wholesale charges – the fees that your operator is charged by a foreign network when you roam.
Data use is exploding.
Most of our customers buy smartphones and are keen users of the internet on their phones.
Over the last year, data use has exploded. Demand for smartphones is higher than ever and customers now expect to use them without worrying about the cost. In fact, 97% of all traffic on our network is data.
We want our customers to have the freedom and peace of mind to access the internet at home and abroad without fear of excessive charges. Today, many people have to completely change the way they use their phone simply because they have crossed a border.
Within the EU.
Within the EU, the wholesale cost of roaming is regulated by the European Commission. However, we believe these wholesale charges remain too high, preventing operators from offering customers the best possible retail prices and limiting competition.
Outside the EU.
Outside of the EU, there are no controls in place to manage how much overseas operators charge UK operators to use their networks. This means we can't offer our customers the kind of value we'd like to when they are roaming abroad. The prices can be very high – costing us as much as £16 per MB of data in some countries.
What are we doing about it?
We are calling on the EU Commission to significantly lower wholesale data roaming charges to enable operators to offer attractive retail prices, allowing our customers to experience the best possible deals when abroad.
Three UK, along with uSwitch.com, Which?, Federation of Communication Services (FCS), Communications Management Association (CMA), International Telecommunications Users Group (INTUG) and Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) have written to the minister of media, culture and sport, Ed Vaizey urging him to use his vote in the European Parliament to lower wholesale rates. You can find the letter here.
