About EU Roam Like at Home

EU Roam Like at Home (RLAH) is the European Union regulation that abolished retail roaming surcharges within the EU and EEA. Active since 15 June 2017 and renewed in 2022 to extend through 2032, it is the most consumer-friendly mobile regulation the EU has ever passed.

Under RLAH, a customer with a mobile plan from any EU or EEA operator can travel to any of the 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway and use their domestic data, call, and SMS allowance with no surcharge. The plan acts as if the user were still at home.

Two important boundaries:

• Switzerland is not covered. Switzerland is in EFTA but not the EEA. Most German tariffs charge zone-1 rates in Switzerland (EUR 0.49-0.99/MB). Telekom prepaid, fraenk, KAUFLAND MOBIL, and NORMA connect include Switzerland anyway as a brand differentiator.
• UK lost RLAH at Brexit. Since 1 January 2021, UK operators are no longer subject to RLAH. Some UK operators (1pMobile, Lebara, EE on some plans) chose to keep EU roaming inclusive; others (Three, Vodafone on some plans) reintroduced daily charges.

RLAH includes a fair-use clause: if a customer's roaming usage sustainably exceeds their domestic usage over 4 months, the operator can apply small surcharges. In practice this only affects users who effectively live in another country while keeping their home SIM.