A week in Dubai. Three days in New York. Two weeks in Spain. All real clients, all charged over £400 per handset for roaming in the last 12 months. All entirely preventable.
What changed after Brexit
Pre-Brexit, the EU roaming regulation meant “roam like at home” across Europe. Most UK carriers reinstated this voluntarily after Brexit, but it is not guaranteed and the terms have tightened. Outside Europe, roaming is paid and has always been.
The default on most business tariffs today is: EU included with fair use limits (typically 12GB), everywhere else is pay-as-you-go at carrier rates. Which for Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, can be £6 per MB. A 30-second photo send is £15.
Why it surprises people
Three reasons.
Staff do not realise they are roaming. Their phone connects to the nearest tower, which might be in the Republic of Ireland when they are in Belfast. It might be in Switzerland when they are skiing in France.
Apps keep using data in the background. iCloud backup, photo library, Dropbox sync, podcast downloads. A single backup over roaming can be 500MB.
Finance only finds out 25 days later when the bill lands. By which point the damage is done.
The four controls that work
Travel packs. Most carriers offer a “daily” roaming bundle that covers a long list of destinations for a flat fee. O2 Travel is £4.99 per day, EE Roam Abroad is £2.50 per day. For a week-long trip, this caps the cost at a known number. Always cheaper than PAYG.
Country-specific bolt-ons. For longer stays, buy a country or regional data pack. 1GB for Dubai over 30 days for £15 is vastly better than the £3 per MB pay-as-you-go rate.
Spend caps. Most carriers let you set a per-month roaming spend cap. £100 per SIM is sensible. Set it on every SIM as standard. It will not stop the overage, but it will stop the catastrophic overage.
Pre-trip alerts and policies. Before travel, enforce a policy: disable automatic photo uploads, disable app background refresh for non-essential apps, and consider a local eSIM for data-heavy usage.
Where my.plan changes the picture
On the tariffs we resell, every SIM is visible in the my.plan portal. Before a trip, you can see which SIM is about to travel and set a roaming cap. Mid-trip, live usage. Post-trip, a per-country breakdown by user. One-click bolt-ons mean that if someone is burning through their pack, you can upgrade them in 30 seconds without a phone call.
The upshot is that we see clients move from 3 or 4 roaming-related bill shocks per year to zero. And the per-trip cost drops by 50 to 80 percent, because they are on the right bolt-on rather than PAYG.
A simple policy that works
For staff who travel, a three-line policy: disable app background data before travelling, always buy a travel pack or bolt-on before the plane lands, and if in doubt, use hotel Wi-Fi. Three lines. Put it in the joiners pack. Review annually.
Our mobile team runs bill audits as a freebie. Send us a recent bill and we will show you what the same month would cost on a properly managed tariff.