The European Commission has decided against limiting the number of days EU residents can take advantage of 'roam like home' and instead will leave it up to operators to intervene if they find customers are using free roaming excessively. European Commissioner for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip announced at a press conference that the Commission was abandoning its earlier proposal to cap roam like home at 90 days from June 2017, when all roaming surcharges are planned to end in the EU. 

EU residents will be able to roam at the same price as they pay at home, and operators can only apply surcharges for roaming if they detect excessive use. Excessive use would be defined as regularly using more traffic while roaming than the customer uses at home, using a SIM for roaming that had previously been inactive for a long time or a customer subscribing to multiple SIMs for roaming. Surcharges would be capped at the proposed wholesale roaming rates, of EUR 0.04 per minute, EUR 0.01 per SMS and EUR 0.0085 per MB. 

Operators world first notify customers of the excessive usage, and customers would be allowed to justify their usage before surcharges are applied. Accepted usage would be based on their home country of residence and "stable links" with the countries they are visiting, such as expats or Erasmus students returning regularly to their home country, or frequent travel for work. 

Customers could appeal the surcharges in a complaint with the operator and ultimately to national regulators, who would decide whether the extra charges are justified. European Commissioner Gunther Oettinger said the proposal will be sent to EU regulator Berec for its opinion and Berec could develop examples to guide national regulatory decisions. 

The aim is for the proposal to be implemented by 15 December, so the end to roaming can take effect next June as planned. The Commissioners said operators making a loss on roaming would also still have the opportunity to apply to national regulators to derogate from roam like home. As outlined earlier, this procedure would allow the operators to apply the regulated roaming surcharges, in order to prevent having to raise domestic prices to offset the roaming losses.