The Telecoms Office have made us aware of an issue with roaming within the EU on iPhones and iPads.

The cause of this is a new setting that Apple have introduced with the roll-out of iOS8 which ties in with new EU regulations coming later this year regarding data roaming within the EU.

In iOS8, under Cellular Data (or Mobile Data) in the Settings app, when data roaming is switched on you then have another option labelled “EU Internet”

The idea of this is that if you switch this on, you can then switch data roaming off again but it will still work in the EU, just not outside of the EU.

Apple has introduced this feature because the EU is working towards a ban on all roaming charges for calls, texts and data starting December this year.

For this feature to work, the foreign network you are connecting to must have this enabled on their network, but unfortunately at the moment the only countries this is known to work in are Slovenia and Lithuania.

This means that having this feature switched on when in any other EU country will mean that you are unable to get a data connection.

Until these changes come into effect, be aware that the “EU Internet” option should be switched OFF for you to be able to use data whilst roaming.