Is EE still two separate underlying networks?

NFH

From October 2010, Everything Everywhere introduced free national roaming between Orange and T-Mobile. Everything worked well except that calls would not hand over between the two networks in the middle of a call in the same way that a call won't hand over between Orange UK and Orange France on a cross-Channel ferry. Customers also had to enable data roaming, otherwise they would get no data connectivity while connected to their non-home brand.

Around September 2012, Orange and T-Mobile sent out SIM updates to their customers which renamed "Orange" (234-33) and "T-Mobile" (234-30) both to "EE". This gave the illusion of one unified network and made it very difficult to see whether or not one was on one's home network or roaming on the other brand. I understood that the plan was to merge the two networks (234-33 and 234-30) into one unified network, but I'm not sure whether this has really happened. If I put a foreign SIM card into a phone, I still see Orange (234-33) and T-Mobile (234-30) listed as separate networks and many foreign networks still list roaming charges separately for Orange and T-Mobile.

The reason I'm asking is to know whether calls now hand over between the two networks (maybe they have become separate MNCs of the same network) and whether one still needs to activate data roaming within the UK. Because the renaming has made it difficult to identify which MNC one is connected to, it's hard to test this. Also, do EE-branded customers have specifically 234-30 or 234-33 as their home network?

d123

As I understand it, EE (the company) allocated subscribers onto the HLR on a basis of price plan, so an old T-Mobile customer might be allocated the old Orange network as home network and vice versa.

There is definitely no need to have roaming activated anymore, the phone seamlessly moves between the 2 networks as signal strength dictates.

redux

My Orange SIM is currently in an old Nokia 5130 phone, also known by Orange as nk402. It's single band 1800; yes that old.

A network search showed EE and one2one, so Orange has been renamed but one2one never even made it to T-mobile

I tried registering on T-mobile. No access the first time. Tried again, and it seemed to freeze with nothing happening. Restarted the phone and it registered one2one.

Put the same SIM in a Nokia 6120 (the later of the 2 models with this name, sometimes called 6120c or Classic), and it registers on and says Orange. Manual search and register and it says T-mobile.

To answer your question perfectly I suppose I should set it back to automatic and go for 2 or 3 walks or drives around.

The problem with that is that a SIM will only try to look for another network to roam on when the one it's on becomes patchy coverage, so I need to find some of that poor coverage, which isn't true at 3g here. Maybe with a 2g phone ...

Skip this bit if you want.

My oldest 3 SIM is vaguely interesting. It came on a contract 8 or 10 years ago, and later moved to payg. Its use overlaps the time that 3's 2g roaming deal switched from O2 to Orange. To begin with a search on the Nokia 7600 with it showed 3 3g and 3 2g plus other networks including Orange 2g.

Later, after the roaming change, it would show 3 3g, 3 2g 3 2g and Vodafone 2g (T-mobile 2g usually too weak to show), and it had 2g roaming on both O2 and Orange; perhaps I'd missed the batch of SIM updates that turned O2 off. Now on the 6120 it lists 3 3 3 T-mobile and Vodafone and only has access to 3 3g.

malcumms7898

I should imagine it is something they are able to do on the network side of things, so you don't actually need to configure anything on your phone (all phones can access all networks, when dialing 999 for example, so all they have to do is allow Orange phones onto T-Mobile network and T-Mobile phones onto Orange network).

NFH

malcumms7898 wrote: »

I should imagine it is something they are able to do on the network side of things, so you don't actually need to configure anything on your phone (all phones can access all networks, when dialing 999 for example, so all they have to do is allow Orange phones onto T-Mobile network and T-Mobile phones onto Orange network).

Yes, we all realised that long ago back in October 2010. I'm asking something more specific than that.

redux

Ok, with a 2g phone (Nokia 3510i) and one lot of patchy coverage at my house:

I did a manual search - well I did 4 or 5 including going upstairs - and registered on to T-mobile (sic, Orange shown as EE), which had one bar on the meter.

I switched to automatic search, and within 30 seconds it had moved to EE. That's not with a live call in progress though. Should I attempt that; is that the handover question you're actually asking? At that rate if I try it here it might switch before I even get the call started.

This is a relatively old SIM (7 or 8 years old) and even older contract, on the Virgin equivalent tariff, if that's of any relevance. From old text messages I see that the SIM update was on 13/10/10 and the first time it connected to T-mobile was on 8/3/11. But I think the rename of Orange but not T-mobile to EE was some time later

NFH

I think it would have to be a new SIM in a very old phone. It needs to be a new SIM so that the current network arrangement applies but a very old phone so that it reads the network names from the phone rather than from the SIM card or from the network. I might try it if the batteries on any of my 1990s phones still work.