Three - Feel at Home in Spain

Frozen_up_north

I've just returned from a trip to Spain using my Three contract SIM on their "feel at home".

The performance was a bit mixed, the data rate is very slow, around 50 ~ 90 Kb/s download but reasonably good for uploading those #HolidaySpam messages Three are keen to advertise.

Making calls to UK mobiles only worked some of the time, at others the mobile called didn't appear to respond. My impression was that only a limited number of voice channels were available between the Spanish mobile networks and Three. On several occasions there was one way audio, this might have been due to faults on the Spanish network.

The "My3" App on my iPhone registered text messages while there, but didn't show any change in voice minutes. I contacted Three as I was concerned that something wasn't quite correct... Their reply was incredible, they said the My3 App would only work while in the UK and that I should log onto my account with a PC to see the correct amount of minutes remaining! You couldn't make it up.

The phone also seemed to latch onto 3 or 4 different Spanish networks, which seemed odd.

Overall it was "OK" for free, but not something to get too excited over.

tberry6686

I've been using this in the US fairly regularly for the past year and never had an issue so I'm a bit surprised that you had problems in Spain. Data rates were good, never noticed any difference between downloading in the UK or US and no problems connecting with mobiles in the UK either.

I suspect the problem is at the Spanish end to be honest.

I didn't bother checking my usage as my contract is all you can eat for everything so no real need from my point of view. The one thing I can say about it is that it did save me a large wad of cash compared to using roaming tarifs(~£4000) over the year so in that respect it is really worthwhile.

lfc321

Haven't used in Spain, but I have in France and Switzerland. Never noticed any difference with data speeds of calling compared to UK.

colin79666

Used it in Finland a couple of weeks ago. Worked great the whole time there although I did notice I only ever got 2G or 3G, not 4G despite the DNA network and my phone being compatible.

Exemplar

Was in France a couple of weeks ago and got 4G!

Yolina

lfc321 wrote: »

I have in France and Switzerland. Never noticed any difference with data speeds of calling compared to UK.

Same countries as you, plus Italy, and I found data speed a bit hit and miss in the places I went to.


Edit: I'll add that I went to the same places in France and Italy before they were feel at home countries and the speeds were hit and miss just the same when I had to pay for data - so probably down to local network.
Switzerland was a bit of a mixed bag - the speeds weren't enough to stream video in St Moritz (fine for radio streaming though), but quite surprisingly it wasn't any worse when out in the forest at the bobsleigh track :rotfl:. I had a look at the Swiss network I was connected to the most and it seems that they have different pricing structures based on speed of data, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

nicllo

Using in Spain now. Speeds tend to be slow for most things but amazingly fast for a video Skype call. Can't stream any internet radio, Facebook timeline takes forever to download, although videos will eventually play. Speedtest results show download speeds of up to 10Mb/s which doesn't reflect my browsing experience so I guess there are some restrictions in place.

simax

There were initial financial reasons for Three not having Feel at Home in Spain, I am pretty sure they're throttling popular applications to protect their margins.

Nicllo - can you access all the networks there or is that now restricted to one/a few?

nicllo

Currently on Movistar, have also tried Orange. I'm on PAYG 12month/12GB package using the Huawei 4G Mifi supplied by Three. I can use Youtube, Slingbox, Video Skype (data hungry apps) but Radio streaming can't achieve fast enough data streams to maintain constant playback. Some websites are very slow too. Logging into my 3Account takes an age. Cell signal is max.


Works very well in UK

Frozen_up_north

simax wrote: »

- can you access all the networks there or is that now restricted to one/a few?

We had auto network selection and used 3 or 4 different Spanish networks.

The data speeds were generally very poor for download and slightly better for upload. These were logged using an iPhone 5 and Three contract SIM using the "Speed Test" App:

Murcia Airport (on arrival). One test only, download 5.46 Mb/s, 0.11 Mb/s upload
All these were in the Torrevieja area and were done from time to time over several days:
Download 0.04 to 0.09 Mb/s and upload 0.34 to 1.74 Mb/s

The data appears to be routed via the UK as looking at bbc.co.uk news pages gave that page. Using the same page via our WiFi in the villa re-directed the page to bbc.com Also trying to use the BBC iPlayer didn't throw up the fact that we were trying to view content outside the UK, although at the download speeds we experienced it didn't work.

gycraig_2

it is not going to be 100% signal everywhere, its exactly the same as uk it will be great some places none existant