Having previously reported that EE had no plans to bring back roaming charges across the EU, they have today announced that they’ll be re-introducing their charges inside the EU (excl. Rep of Ireland) from January 2022 for upgrades and new customers, who upgrade or join before 7th July 2021.

EE aren’t the only network operator to be considering their post-Brexit offering. O2 have announced that users will be charge £3.50 for every gigabite over their new 25GB data limit – though as yet, there remains no fee for that initial 25GB data usage.

The UK’s trade deal with the EU says that both sides will encourage operators to have “transparent and reasonable rates” for roaming, but it did not ban charges.

So, what does this mean for European business travel? There is some protection in place to stop the wildly escalating bills that we used to see – the Government have introduced a £45/month cap on fees (before needing to opt-in further) and a mandatory warning when the user is at 80% and 100% of their usage.

But other than that, it’s not great news I’m afraid! The flexibility of working wherever you please will be a thing of the past. Users who regularly travel on the continent will need to be much more aware of Wifi availability in advance – so responding to those immediate emails will become slightly troublesome.

The better news is that there are much better tools out there now than there were before – for you to search through new providers, based on their roaming charges. Alternatively, if you do a lot of business in a particular country, it might be worth investing in a second country-specific contract – so you know you’ll always be able to get online.

Although this is just EE for the moment, our advice is to keep an eye on all of the networks – because if 1 is introducing prices and another is re-thinking their usage limit, the others are bound to follow in their footsteps and it’s definitely something you need to be aware of before you travel.