The impact of Roam Like At Home

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has published the International Roaming Benchmark Data Report (1 April 2017 – 30 September 2017).

The report shows that roaming traffic increased considerably in the EU/EEA when compared to previous year, prior to the implementation of the Roam Like at Home (RLAH) principle. One of the report key findings is that more than 90% of the intra-EU/EEA roaming traffic utilised RLAH and the remaining traffic was consumed using alternative roaming tariffs. Roaming traffic with a surcharge (due to a derogation) represented less than 2% of the total traffic. When compared to Q3 of 2016, the EEA roaming traffic resulted in a five times increase in data consumption and by two and a half times increase in voice and SMS consumption.

Another key finding of the report was that the wholesale roaming market prices are below the regulated caps established by the EU.

The situation in Malta is very similar to other EU countries and the implementation of the RLAH brought a major increase in the consumption of roaming services by Maltese travelling in EU/EEA countries. The report shows that there was a significant increase of 300% in data consumption, followed by an increase of 73% in voice calls made and 56% increase in SMS.

The results of the report show that the RLAH rules are achieving their objective to unleash the previous untapped roaming consumption.