Of course it would be weird if I had to pay roaming charges between different states.
It used to be that way in the US; until we had consolidation and national carriers emerged.
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That’s not true, you can use the entire data your contract allows you to, in this case 40GB.
Not quite, there is a data limit and charges afterward:
Data limits - national bundles with limited data
If you have limited or very cheap mobile data (less than €3.85 / GB in 2017), your operator may apply a "fair use" limit for data when you are roaming. The
limit is calculated on the basis of the
retail price of your domestic mobile bundle as in the case of unlimited data (above). Your operator must
inform you in advance about this limit and will have to
alert you when you reach it. Be aware that you can continue data roaming but your operator will apply a surcharge. This surcharge will be the wholesale data cap = €7.70 / GB of data in 2017 plus VAT, €6 / GB plus VAT in 2018. The data cap will decrease further after 2018.
http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/telecoms-internet/mobile-roaming-costs/index_en.htm
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Really? I'm with EE and have 10Gb and I'm allowed to use all of it in Europe.
I'm curious as to why they have instigated a clause that stops you for example buying a cheap sim in Spain and using it in the UK. However I'm not sure how they can enforce that.
Prevent competition from cheap SIMs. If you could get a cheap SIM from another country and roam 100% of the time in your own country how long would it be before cheap SIMS posed up on eBay and carries found a lot of users buying them simply to get cheap service by abusing roaming? The EU directive includes fair use limits and caps to prevent that; although the cheap SIM companies would probably go out of business if enough uses bought them from abroad simply because the roaming fees that pay the other carrier would exceed the revenue form the plans.
Providers can prevent this by simply not allowing roaming on specific plans; nothing in the directive requires roaming be part of a plan.