New legislation
On June 15th, the EU introduced Roam Like at Home (RLAH), allowing EU residents to use their mobile allowances anywhere in the EU.
What does this mean?
There will be no roaming charges when travelling to another EU country from 15th June. Every existing or new contract that includes roaming services will change to a Roam Like At Home contract. New EU rules will cover data services, voice calls and SMS.
Communications (phone calls, SMS, data) made from another EU country will be covered in the national bundle: the minutes, SMS and gigabytes of data consumed abroad in the EU will be deducted from the volumes of the national tariff plan.
Which countries are covered?
All 28 countries of the EU are covered by the legislation; Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom.
New opportunity
This presents resellers with an opportunity to become trusted advisors and experts in mobile SIM management. The mobile networks have created their own zones to include additional countries. Mobile users may still incur overages if they go over their allowances or breach Fair Usage Policies. They will often incur significant, out-of-bundle charges if they roam outside of these ‘Euro Zones’.
Whether you bundle airtime and handsets or are a SIM-only supplier, the removal of European roaming charges will have an impact. There are hundreds of thousands of UK-based business travellers within Europe at any given time, using mobile data for email, streaming video and voice. If they are not sure which countries are covered, customers may still leave their data roaming switched off for fear of excessive charges. Resellers can allay these fears by using Mobile Manager. Alerts can be established for when customers go over their data allowances and bolt-ons added to avoid overages. They can even set the SIM to bar if it roams out-of-zone.
Jola’s Mobile Manager portal has been designed specifically for channel partners wanting to monitor usage and manage SIMs remotely, both at home and abroad.
To find out more….
