Just a quick note to draw attention to a decision by BIPT, the regulator in Belgium here

Lycamobile has been fined €30,000 for violation of the “roam like at home” requirements of the roaming regulation (contained in the 2012 regulation as amended in 2015). It appears that they were offering add-on bundles (at attractive prices) that did not did allow roaming alongside more expensive plans which did allow roaming (and which in practice would only ever be used when roaming).

The roaming regulation prohibits “roaming providers” from charging any surcharge ontop of the “domestic retail price” for roaming, and goes on to prohibit “any general charge to enable the… service to be used abroad”. The regime also includes wholesale price caps that the visited operator’s network can charge to the roaming provider for roaming services.

This puts MVNOs like Lycamobile in a difficult position because – as an MVNO – they never receive any inbound roaming revenue but yet the regulation now requires them to offer roaming to end users without any additional charge though they will incur an additional incremental fee. Thus each extra Mb or minute when roaming will be loss-making for them. Lycamobile must have designed their offer thinking they had found a way around this problem – but unfortunately for them the BIPT has determined that this violated the roaming regulation’s requirements.

In my opinion* it would always be open to an MVNO to block roaming for its end-users entirely – there is no requirement that roaming be offered, only that *if* it is offered there can be no surcharge. The issue here is that Lycamobile appeared to be allowing roaming but charging for it at a different rate from the rate applicable for domestic bundles.

Finally – and as an aside – i think the roaming regulation is clear that MVNOs *are* entitled to the benefit of the wholesale price caps – though if they are effectively reselling roaming bought from their domestic host MNO (called “wholesale roaming resale access”) then the host is entitled to charge a “fair and reasonable” increment on top of the regulated rate to reflect their extra costs in supplying roaming to the MVNO from the visited operator (see Article 3 of the 2012 Roaming regulation). We have seen some MNOs attempt to charge their MVNOs much more than this, arguing that the roaming regulation does not apply. This would appear to be wrong.

*Of course this is not legal advice and specific advice should be sought to confirm in any particular situation.