O2 Roaming

Zephyrx

I was on o2 a couple of years ago and had the worst service from then I've had from any company, ever. Nevertheless, as so many of the other mobile companies have got rid of free roaming, I was tempted to look at o2 again as they're making a big deal of the fact that they're the only one of the big 4 who still provides free roaming. I've also noticed that they're offering free USA roaming with some of their deals. I've looked at the small print and it seems to say that they'll throttle your data speeds while roaming to an unusable 500 Mbps. I had that problem last time I was with them several years ago. I was just wondering if anybody has had more recent experience with o2 when roaming? Do they still throttle your data speeds significantly?

will-he-payitoff

Just been to Greece for two weeks and had no problems with roaming on O2. Did not try streaming music/ videos but for web surfing and emails it was fine.

Neil49

I've recently visited Spain and Portugal and had a very good service at all times. Like the response above I didn't use it for streaming videos etc but for general use it was better than in the UK.

There are plenty of MVNO'S who offer EU roaming as part of the deal and many have monthly contracts. You may wish to investigate those. US roaming (as part of your contract) is more of a problem in terms of availability. 

Andy7856

Was in Crotia in May/June.  No speed reduction. Infact it was far greater than any UK service. Think I got upto 16Mbs (seldom get about 5Mbs in my home and less than 0.1Mbs in the city centre.

charlieboy_80

I’m in the USA right now roaming on O2. It’s terrible! I can make calls (Although not to my partner also roaming on O2 as there is too much of a delay, but I can phone American friends & family); data is super slow. iMessage works, but loading webpages / Facebook / etc is extremely slow.

 One restaurant we went to had a QR code to scan to access the menu. The waitress came by to see if we were ready to order 4 minutes later and the menu still hadn’t loaded. 

I’m annoyed as I stuck with O2 because it offered USA roaming. Last time I came to America I roamed with EE. EE was more expensive (£10/month?) but at least it worked properly.

I tried to stream something on Spotify - audio that takes up very little bandwidth, and it just didn’t work at all.

O2 roaming in America it’s terrible.

Side note- when we roamed in France, it worked great.

eDicky

Try changing the local network provider that you're roaming on. In your phone's roaming settings switch from automatic network selection to manual, after scanning it will list what's available for you to choose from, those that are permitted at least.