A friend of mine from Prague went on an ethnographic expedition to the Himalayas with no cash and no card, just a phone with Apple Pay on it.  He’s never known a phone without NFC, and he grew up in a city where you can tap to pay at any fruit stand. It doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind that somewhere out there, the world might work differently.

European cities still don’t have teleporters or flying cars, but technology has become such a normal part of daily life that we treat it as a given, not a privilege.

Mobile connectivity is one of the best examples. Roam Like at Home has been around since 15 June 2017, covering the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. From 1 January 2026, Moldova and Ukraine joined the zone too. Network coverage is dense, the experience is smooth, and an entire generation of Europeans genuinely believes their phone just works wherever they go.

My friends and I have collected all kinds of roaming stories. None of us is stupid, for the record. The real reason is that we’re spoiled, not by luxury, but by infrastructure.

Europe ≠ EU

Добро дошли у Београд!

A friend of mine from Barcelona got an unplanned geography lesson the moment he stepped off the plane in Belgrade. “But I never left Europe!” was all he could say, staring at the charge on his account. 

He was right that he hadn’t left the continent of Europe. He had left the European Union, and its shared roaming agreement.

Serbia is geographically part of Europe, but it is not an EU or EEA member, so it falls outside the EU’s Roam Like at Home rules. Talks on bringing Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and North Macedonia into the agreement are already underway, with accession expected sometime around 2027 to 2028.

The next slope. The next lift. The next bill.

A small country, but a major ski destination. Andorra is not part of the EU or the EEA, so EU roaming rules do not apply there automatically. Most home carriers don’t include Andorra in their Roam Like at Home coverage by default. Mine didn’t.

It’s a similar story with Switzerland, surrounded by the EU on almost every side, and the UK, which used to be a member. You might get the same seamless connection you have at home. Or you might not. 

Switzerland and the UK are not part of the Roam Like at Home agreement. Whether your usual data plan works there depends entirely on your mobile operator and your tariff. 

There is, in theory, a simple way to avoid the surprise: read the small print in your mobile contract before travelling. But for most Europeans, that habit has withered away like an unused organ.

Ready at home. Ready at the destination. Not ready in between.

When we fly to Thailand, the Maldives, Japan, or China, we obviously can’t make the same mistake as in the cases above. We plan ahead and buy a data package for wherever we’re headed. A destination-specific package only works in the country it’s meant for. It doesn’t cover transit airports or layover countries along the way. What we forget to think through is the layover itself, in airports like Istanbul, Doha, or Dubai.

We’ve written before about what happens when airport Wi-Fi becomes your actual plan for a long layover. Let’s be honest: that “plan” is really just the absence of a plan. No judgment, though. Not planning for this has become second nature for most of us.

To paraphrase a famous line from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “As you value your life or your reason keep away from the airport Wi-Fi.”

Even at the most modern airports, there’s no guarantee the free Wi-Fi will actually work. And if it does, the one thing you can rely on is the ritual: 

Accept terms→Watch an ad→Enter your email→Confirm your phone number→Repeat

You might also end up standing in line at a self-service Wi-Fi kiosk, passport open and ready to be scanned.

But the most important thing to be aware of is the real price you pay for this ‘free’ service. How much could handing your private data over to a network that isn’t secure by default end up costing you? And how much could someone else make off it? Connecting to free Wi-Fi should be a decision you make with your eyes open, not a habit you fall into without thinking.

A Security Guide to Public WiFi:
Part 1 – The Invisible Threat, Part 2 – How Much Does Free Wi-Fi Really Cost You?

Like at home, but not quite like.

Even inside the EU, the smooth version of Roam Like at Home often comes with a fair-use limit. Once you run through your included data, you have to buy tiny top-ups at excessive prices, or a bigger package you’ll probably never use up. So much for “effortless”.

We travel looking for new experiences, for a little adventure. But when it comes to your phone, adventure is always bad news. Nobody wants exciting roaming, any more than they want exciting electricity. Boring technology, the kind that just works without surprises, is the real luxury of our time.

At MTX Connect, we make mobile connectivity boring again. Not just in Europe, but across the world.