What is roaming?
Roaming makes it possible to use your MobilityPlus charging card to also charge at charging stations not managed by MobilityPlus. And vice versa, to allow third-party charging cards to charge at MobilityPlus charging stations.
Via roaming, the existing charging infrastructure can be shared. This allows the different communication protocols of various charging station operators to communicate with each other. It allows you as an EV driver to charge on as many different charging networks as possible with 1 charging card.
This benefits the user experience of EV drivers and is an important element in building an electric ecosystem in Europe.
How does roaming work?
Roaming comes about through cooperation agreements between Charging Point Operators (CPO) and eMobility Service Providers (eMSP, charging card issuers). The CPO manages the physical charging stations. The eMSP allows drivers to charge at those stations via a charging card (or via the app).
You can compare it to your mobile phone. Your network provider has agreements with other providers, allowing you to call and surf even outside your provider's coverage area.
In some cases there is a direct agreement (peer-to-peer) between the CPO and the eMSP, but in most cases there is an intermediary involved, a roaming hub. The latter facilitates the various roaming agreements and ensures standardised communication between all parties involved. Around four roaming hubs operate in Europe.
With the MobilityPlus charge card, you charge at +550,000 charging stations in Europe, including +30,000 publicly accessible charging stations in Belgium.
All charging stations visible in the app accept your MobilityPlus charge card.
Not all of these charging stations are managed by MobilityPlus. This very wide charging network is possible due to cooperation with partners such as Allego, TotalEnergies, Fastned, Ionity, Q8, Shell, Vattenfal,... To the overview of our roaming partners
What information, the type of information and the correctness of the information shared or not (yet) shared with MobilityPlus depends on the roaming partner or roaming hub.
For example:
- Address of the charging station
- Status of the charging station ( available, in use, faulty)
- Limited accessibility
When this information is available, this charging station is indicated with a lockin the MobilityPlus app. Read more here.
- Instant display of active charging session / terminated charging session Read more
Authentication of your charge card
After you hold your charging card against the card reader, the CPO (charging station) operator's system scans its database to see if your charge card gets approval to charge or not. Each roaming hub or roaming partner works with its own database and server infrastructure and this very occasionally presents challenges.
Sometimes a timeout occurs during this authentication. If the charging station does appear in the MobilityPlus app, offer your charge card again. After a few times, it will succeed!
In exceptional cases, the charging station's card reader may be faulty, in which case you can try starting the charging session via the MobilityPlus app. Read more