It recently became known that the European Commission has agreed to grant Ukraine a «roaming visa-free regime.» This pan-European initiative is called Roam like at home (RLAH). Ukraine will join it from the beginning of next year.
It recently became known that the European Commission has agreed to grant Ukraine a «roaming visa-free regime.» This pan-European initiative is called Roam like at home (RLAH). Ukraine will join it from the beginning of next year.
The Europeans created RLAH so that EU residents would not overpay for roaming in the states of the union. For example, if a German citizen went on vacation to France, the local French mobile operator would guarantee that the German would not receive a huge bill for using the connection, because there are clear rules regarding what the pan-European roaming tariff should be.
As for Ukrainians, since the beginning of the large-scale war with Russia, they have already been roaming in EU countries on preferential terms that are no worse (and maybe even better) than European-wide conditions.
This solution is temporary. It was achieved through direct negotiations between Ukrainian operators and European ones. In 2022, the Europeans made significant concessions regarding the price of servicing Ukrainian roaming users. But this cannot last forever.
From 2026, Ukrainians will be served in Europe on pan-European terms. And in these terms, there will be several nuances that you need to be aware of.
The first important nuance is that Ukrainian roamers (with Ukrainian cards) in Europe, according to RLAH standards, cannot be permanently served in the country of residence on preferential terms.
Under RLAH, a subscriber can roam at home rates for up to 4 consecutive months. This assumes that: you live in one EU/EEA (European Economic Area) country and periodically travel to other countries. And you spend more time at home than roaming — or at least use the service more often at home.
As for Ukrainians, they have been living in EU countries for more than three years. And some have not even visited Ukraine. So difficulties may arise for them. If there are no special conditions, it may be cheaper to throw away the Ukrainian SIM card and buy a local one — European.
CEO Oleksandr Komarov confirmed to dev.ua that the 4-month restriction on preferential roaming in the EU will indeed apply to Ukrainian roamers. But he added: «There is an opportunity to work with this.»
The second nuance concerns the mobile business as such. As Komarov stated in an interview with Liga.net, «roaming visa-free» will significantly reduce the revenue of Ukrainian mobile operators. He predicts that in 2026 Ukraine will lose foreign currency income by an amount that, in hryvnia terms, will amount to about UAH 3-4 billion.
Why will this happen? The fact is that in Europe, wholesale tariffs for access to networks in other EU countries have been reduced to almost zero. For example, in 2025 they were limited to 0.019 euros per minute. But Ukrainian operators are now working with European operators on direct agreements, which stipulate significantly higher tariffs for terminating calls from Europeans to Ukrainian numbers.
Therefore, bringing these wholesale tariffs to the European level will really affect the foreign exchange earnings of Ukrainian companies.
Operators, as is right, do not provide figures here. But from the Vodafone Ukraine report, you can see that in 2024, revenue from passing traffic from other mobile operators (Ukrainian and foreign) amounted to UAH 2.5 billion. At the same time, the costs of passing traffic in the networks of other mobile operators amounted to UAH 1.1 billion.
That is, the amount that Vodafone Ukraine pays for access to Ukrainian and foreign networks is UAH 1.4 billion less than the amount it receives for using its network by other operators. It can be assumed that the imbalance is caused by high interconnection rates for foreign partners.
