National Roaming

tholland55

Does anyone know if national roaming is possible between the UK networks (apart from the obvious exception of 3)? It would be very useful to have service on my O2 phone in quite a few areas with no coverage (but with coverage on other networks; notably Orange) despite the higher costs that would be incurred.

knuckledragger

Can you use your phone to manually search for GSM networks then select the one that you want? As you would do abroad for instance.

tholland55

That doesn't work, it just says access denied. It needs to be enabled by the network.

patwa_2

hello. It sounds like your phone is network locked. Depending on what phoen you have, you may be able to get it unlocked, either via a code that you can get over the net free of charge or by calling one of the phone unlocking helplines, or else for between £10-£20 from a street market or phone shop in your local area.

If your phone is a Nokia 6630, 6680 or other using the new BB5 encryption algorithm, you're pretty much out of luck, unless you pay the network very high charges (usually the remainder of your contract price (and no, you won't get subsequent months free)) or £10,000 to a guy that often frequents our local The Link store, and who travels around the world unlocking these phones on demand.

You could also just buy a new cheap unlocked phone on eBay, if it's just some areas where you don't get a signal, evena cheap simple 'text based' phone (the earlier nokias) would serve you OK.

BTW,this got me thinking. Does you phone swap between networks at all? On the display, do you sometimes see it change from O2 to another network briefly? This would at least indicate that your phone is picking up the networks, but just can't use them for making calls. My phone on 3 sometimes does that, I'll be in one of the Uni buildings, and it'll flash from 3 to O2 UK if I stand in one particular spot, but I can't do anything with it. Do you have international roaming enabled? You might want to get this feature turned on, as I have heard people mention that this solved their problem in the UK. They could use their O2 sim card, but make the calls using another networks' cells.

Hope this helps.

Cheers and take care.

Hussein.

espresso

tholland55 wrote:

Does anyone know if national roaming is possible between the UK networks (apart from the obvious exception of 3)? It would be very useful to have service on my O2 phone in quite a few areas with no coverage (but with coverage on other networks; notably Orange) despite the higher costs that would be incurred.

Definitely not possible in the UK even for emergency calls, apart from 3's agreements with O2/Orange.

If you do a manual network selection on your handset, it should show the networks in signal strength order but you can't register on the other networks.

:eek:

fonesaver

I have seen 'emergency calls only' display on a Vodafone handset. I have assumed that this means I have no Vodafone signal but able to call 112/999 via another network but maybe it just means the network is busy but will allow you to call in an emergency???

espresso

fonesaver wrote:

I have seen 'emergency calls only' display on a Vodafone handset. I have assumed that this means I have no Vodafone signal but able to call 112/999 via another network but maybe it just means the network is busy but will allow you to call in an emergency???

You may well have seen it but remember that handsets are sold in various countries and it won't work here on other network providers.

:eek:

payless

I believe only 3 have this backup service.

However if its a real issue you can get a forgein sim , that will then roam onto available UK networks ... not as daft as it sounds , as you can get a Isle of Man simcard ( still a UK 0044 7 number) thats does this , with no costs for incoming calls ... although some providers might charge slightly differently for those calling you

slowlybutsurely

Whereabouts in the country are you having coverage issues with O2?

tholland55

slowlybutsurely wrote:

Whereabouts in the country are you having coverage issues with O2?

Specifically Hope Valley in Derbyshire (around Edale). Despite what the O2 website says there is absolutely no O2 coverage until you're on the fells. Orange has an excellent signal there.

MickKnipfler

Other than '3' 2G, National Roaming only works in Channel Islands and IOM