My operator pursues a fair use policy for roaming services. What does that entail?

Operators are entitled to pursue a fair use policy for the use of roaming services within the European Union (and associated countries: Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein).

There are two ways to implement this:

  • Over a period of 4 months the operator can monitor your presence and consumption abroad:
    • If your presence and roaming consumption over 4 months exceeds 50%, your operator has to notify you and ask you to change your behaviour;
    • Once you have been notified by your operator, you have 2 weeks to change your behaviour;
    • If your presence and consumption have not changed by the end of those 2 weeks, your operator may apply a surcharge for the roaming services.
  • The operator can restrict the mobile Internet roaming consumption (your data). If you roam and exceed the mobile Internet limit your operator set, he can apply a surcharge for mobile Internet use via roaming. 

Upon exceeding the fair use policy (in any which form), the surcharges applied by the operator, may not exceed the following amounts:

What do you do? How much do you pay?
(VAT included)
You make a call Maximum 3.8 eurocent per call minute in addition to the domestic tariff
(1.9 eurocent as of 2025)
You receive a call Maximum 0.2 eurocent per minute of the received call
You send an SMS Maximum 1.2 eurocent per SMS in addition to the domestic tariff
(0.3 eurocent as of 2025)
You receive an SMS No surcharge possible
You surf the Internet Maximum 0.34 eurocent per megabyte in addition to the domestic tariff
(0.2 eurocent as of 2025)
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