Roaming in Europe updates: two new countries and more Giga

The start of 2026 marks a fundamental watershed for telecommunications in the Old Continent, bringing with it a reorganization of the regulation of the area “Roaming like at home“.

This is not a simple tariff adjustment, but a structural maneuver that touches both the political geography of roaming and the mobile data economy.

The Brussels authorities, through the Council and the EU Commission, have in fact implemented a plan that extends consumer rights and physically expands the area in which it is possible to communicate as if you were in your home country.

Roaming UE, Moldova and Ukraine in the single market

The most evident novelty when looking at the map is the removal of tariff barriers toward Eastern Europe. From January 2026, the obligation to apply domestic pricing officially also covers Ukraine and Moldova.

If until last year the inclusion of these territories depended on the discretion of individual operators or temporary solidarity promotions, today it becomes a regulatory obligation for all telecom operators of the member countries.

This integration brings the total number of states to 33 where travelers can forget about extra costs. Across this vast area, the contractual terms signed in Italy remain perfectly valid.

London moves away

As digital Europe welcomes new members to the East, in the West the detachment of the United Kingdom becomes definitively consolidated. The effects of Brexit on telecommunications, left pending for a grace period of several years, are now fully operative.

If until the start of 2025 many Italian operators had kept London in the free area for commercial inertia, the second half of last year saw a radical shift in trend.

The main players in the Italian market, including TIM, WindTre, Kena, Very Mobile and more recently Iliad, have progressively removed the United Kingdom from the list of friendly countries.

From January 1, 2026, therefore, traveling across the pond requires particular attention: with no longer any community protections, the costs and navigation methods depend exclusively on private agreements between the individual companies.

Some users may still benefit from favorable conditions, but these are now contractual exceptions and no longer acquired rights.

How do gigabytes grow?

The aspect that will have the most tangible impact on citizens’ daily life concerns, however, the volume of usable data. The EU regulation provides for an annual update mechanism based on the decline in wholesale prices, i.e., the rates operators charge each other for network use.

Since these industrial costs have fallen, the formula for calculating the gigabytes available to the end user has become more generous.

The calculation is technical but the result is simple: the divisor coefficient, which in 2025 was fixed at 1.30 euros, has fallen to 1.10 euros per gigabyte. Applying the standard formula, which involves dividing the monthly cost of the offer (VAT excluded) by this new coefficient and multiplying by two, yields a significantly larger data nest egg.

Who pays a monthly fee of about 10 euros net, for example, will see their data allowance abroad rise from about 15 GB to nearly 18 GB, without having to activate any option and without extra costs.

Quality of the network and roaming overage costs

The 2026 package also includes quality protections and further price reductions.

On the economic front, if a user exhausts all roaming Giga, the cost to continue navigating pay-as-you-go gets cut, dropping to about 0.134 euro-cents per MB. A figure that, though small, reduces the risk of hefty bills for heavy data users.

Finally, the principle of technological neutrality is reinforced: there are no discriminations on signal quality. Those with a 5G contract in Italy have the legal right to connect to 5G even abroad, where the local infrastructure allows. The practice of limiting speed to 4G, once common to save bandwidth, is now prohibited if the higher technology is available.

The current scenario will remain valid for one year: the European roadmap has already set January 1, 2027 as the next step, when the wholesale cost will drop to a round 1 euro, guaranteeing a further increase in Giga that will remain stable until the regulation expires in 2032.