Locals and tourists around the White Cliffs of Dover have been receiving mobile phone messages reading “Welcome to France” followed by extra charges for international roaming.
The area of St Margaret’s Bay and the village of St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe, 18 miles across the English Channel from Calais, picks up a French signal, hitting some customers with large data roaming charges, locals say.
Some couples have even accused each other of having affairs with French lovers after seeing the bills, said Perry Mercer, of estate agents Marshall and Clarke in St Margaret’s, according to the Daily Telegraph.
“We are a little telecommunications enclave of France here,” said Nigel Wydymus, 53, landlord of the Coastguard pub and restaurant.
“Obviously people strolling along the beach in England do not expect to be on a French network and so, unlike when they get off the plane in Spain or elsewhere, they haven’t switched off their data roaming and it causes some extra bills.
“In the village, the French signal is patchy depending on the atmospherics and the weather, but here on the beach the French signal is constant because we are a the foot of the cliffs and the UK signal is blocked out.”
Costs for calls on the French network can be up to four times domestic charges, while web browsing costs £1.50 per megabyte capped at £4 a day.
A spokesman for EE, which operates the T-Mobile and Orange networks, said: “We always recommend our customers switch off roaming while they are in this little pocket of an area to ensure that they are connecting to the correct network because we cannot control the networks from the other side of the water.”
'Welcome to France': Kent phones hit with roaming charges
