topic Re: EU roaming fair usage in Roaming

EU roaming fair usage

HectorsHouse — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:46:04 GMT

Yesterday I bought a plan with ‘free’ EU roaming. I expect there is a fair usage clause but I cannot see it. Can someone tell what it is & when it resets ( daily, weekly, per billing cycle). If you reach the limit, do you then flip on to the daily roaming charge?Thanks.

Re: EU roaming fair usage

Schockwave — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:57:46 GMT

Hello @HectorsHouse ,

Welcome to the community,,

Yes, the fair usage for free roaming data is up to 50GB per month, it resets each month at your billing date. Not sure about the latter, hopefully someone can answer that one for you.

Re: EU roaming fair usage

XRaySpeX — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 10:38:48 GMT

Yes, the FUP for roaming data in EU is 50 GB per billing month. You'll find it mentioned on p4 of EE pay monthly plans price guide under "Fair use amount".

Re: EU roaming fair usage

Beepee53 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:01:26 GMT

I understand what the so called "fair usage policy" is, but I don't understand why it exists. I can use less than half of my UK data which is paid for every month when I'm roaming. Why? I don't think EE incurs extra charges for providing data while roaming so why should I incur extra charges for maxing out my contracted amount?

Re: EU roaming fair usage

Matt_124 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:29:35 GMT

I hope you are aware that it is not just EE, and the 50GB is quite generous compared to many other networks. 50GB in the USA for example is a very healthy allowance to get from a roaming perspective with no speed caps or aggressive traffic management (at least to my knowledge). This type of policy is adopted in many countries.

Generally it is to prevent abuse by obtaining a SIM from a different country and using it continuously abroad. Roaming customers can put a strain on the network resources in the countries they're visiting and this has to be managed so that residents continue to have satisfactory bandwidth as they are the core customers.

Operators have to maintain relationships and contracts to allow customers to roam on foreign networks. Sometimes the conditions to offer roaming in a country are dependent on a Fair Usage Policy being in place for roaming customers or some other form of traffic management for their customers abroad.

Obviously the networks have no way of charging customers roaming from different countries directly, so the funds from roaming charges and surcharges are often used to support their own network costs that are incurred as a result of customers visiting from abroad. The same goes for other nations, where the fees they charge their own customers are used to support the network running costs associated with customers visiting from abroad.

Re: EU roaming fair usage

Beepee53 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:34:25 GMT

Thanks for the response Matt. The nub of it seems to be FUPs help avoid visitors gumming up networks for "home" users. But if I'm using my 125 gb allowance via, say, Orange in Spain, doesn't that free up 125 GB of capacity on EE in the UK for some lucky roaming Spaniard?

Having just been billed for my annual "inflation plus" price increase I'm less inclined to buy your stuff about process management thanks.

Re: EU roaming fair usage

bristolian — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:15:53 GMT

@Beepee53 wrote:

But if I'm using my 125 gb allowance via, say, Orange in Spain, doesn't that free up 125 GB of capacity on EE in the UK for some lucky roaming Spaniard?

Now you're getting into the realms of capacity management, which brings in the whole differential between the radio access side & core-routing piece!

The commercial agreements between roaming networks will cover FUPs & traffic management, but Matt's reply above certainly covers some of the basics - things are rarely as simple as most customers would like!!

Re: EU roaming fair usage

Beepee53 — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 16:00:43 GMT

So basically, it's complicated, perhaps more than the average person will
understand? So just pay up and shut up?

What this customer would like is to use the data I've already paid for, for
once. My average monthly use over the last six months has been 17 GB. That
includes a fair amount of roaming. As I have fast fibre at home my main
usage in terms of data volume is currently roaming. I pay £35.60 for 125gb,
soon to be increased by inflation plus 3%, or whatever the current rip off
formula is. But I have to be grateful for the "generous" roaming allowance
of 40% of that? In what other commercial sphere are customers prevented
from using goods or services already paid for, by the vendor? It's a
nonsense.

If there is a real life problem out there that UK FUPs are designed to
solve then point me to it. Meantime it feels like I'm just another mug
that's paying for an even bigger superyacht for some mega billionaire.
Fortunately my contract period is up soon and I'll be off back to cheap
paygo for home and a country based data SIM when abroad.

Hasta luego.

Re: EU roaming fair usage

bristolian — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 19:18:07 GMT

@Beepee53 wrote:
My average monthly use over the last six months has been 17 GB

Usage of well over double your average is more than covered by the existing FUP.

Re: EU roaming fair usage

Beepee53 — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 19:35:43 GMT

Completely irrelevant, I want to significantly increase my streaming whilst
abroad.

Who are you? If you're an EE employee can you answer my question? What is
the problem your FUP is trying to solve?

Re: EU roaming fair usage

Schockwave — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 20:46:25 GMT

@Beepee53 , when roaming, why not use wifi? Then it will not matter how much you stream.

By the way @bristolian is not an employee, you may want to take a look at what an EE community star stands for, EE employees, you will see that where their username is.

There is a FUP when roaming and that is 50GB, which should be enough, then use WiFi if you need more for streaming.

Re: EU roaming fair usage

bristolian — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 21:17:07 GMT

@Beepee53 wrote:

Who are you? If you're an EE employee

I'm a user of this forum. Albeit a regular one, with some telecoms industry experience.

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/EE-Community-info-News/Meet-our-Community-Team/td-p/1415489 highlights the staff team

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/EE-Community-info-News/Meet-our-Community-Stars/td-p/1421642 explains the Star programme.