Three's Feel at Home in Spain

Frozen_up_north

We have just returned from our 2nd trip of the year to Torrevieja. We have two iPhones (both original model 5, not network locked and using iOS9) and both on Three contracts.

While Three's Feel at Home meant we could keep in touch with folks back in the UK for no extra cost, it was a little flaky. The data speed was very variable, the best being 14.3 Mb/s download and 1.67 Mb/s upload... Unfortunately, there were many times when data didn't work at all despite the phone showing 3G and a good signal strength.

With the phones set to their default "auto" carrier select, they frequently showed no service or kept swapping between Yoigo, Orange and Movistar. I managed to manually select Orange on my phone and it behaved a lot better, however the other phone only seemed to find a network when on auto. We were in a good signal area.

Phoning UK land lines seemed to result in several failed connections before the phone rang, although calls to a Three mobile in the UK seemed to connect more reliably. It's hard to say if this was due to lousy local mobile networks or something Three related.

As I found on my last visit, the Three App didn't show any changes to the minutes/texts remaining while in Spain. I made several phone calls while in Spain and on return to the UK, the App is showing 15 minutes used (included network minutes) compared to 37 minutes of use as recorded by the iPhone... Which is OK while it's in the users favour.

Is my roaming experience typical, or was I just unfortunate? I suppose when something is "free" I shouldn't complain too much.

Obviously_the_best

14.3Mb/s is a good speed. TBH, Spanish mobile networks don't tend to have fantastic coverage everywhere, it seems to be very region dependent.

Having said that, I've never had a single problem roaming using Vodafone or Three. Vodafone's networks abroad do seem to be the better ones though, much the same as in the UK really.