Everything Everywhere to allow 3G mobile broadband roaming
Who wants to carry mobile broadband dongles from a few operators to ensure coverage around the UK while travelling? The good news is that Everything Everywhere may be making life a little easier for these travellers next week as it permits customers of both the Orange and T-Mobile 3G network to use each other's network.
"This is a significant achievement and demonstrates the latest milestone in our network vision and customer promise - to provide more things, to more people in more places than any other company in Britain."
Olaf Swantee, CEO of Everything Everywhere
Unlike with the voice/text changes previously, roaming onto the alternative data network will not require prior registration, with users informed of the option via SMS. So long as Orange and T-Mobile are not already on the same mobile mast in an area, it should improve coverage for customers, and at times of congestion will give people the option of trying a different network.
Comments
It is the entire of 3G so for smartphones, dongles, etc.
"So long as Orange and T-Mobile are not already on the same mobile mast in an area, it should improve coverage"
No two operators can be at the same height on most of the masts in the UK therefore coverage may still improve if the other network has a higher physical position on the mast, say above a tree line or building...
...but surely the whole point of sharing and roaming between the EE networks is that this is in areas where there is minimal site sharing going on in the first place and where there is co-siting of equipment on the same mast, one of the two EE networks will get switched off to reduce overall cost of proving coverage in that area?
Will it apply to Virgin Mobile? They still don't seem to have got the basic roaming working yet.
will the network automatically roam onto one and other or will it be T-Mobile and T-Mobile Orange or have they got the same name such as T-Orange?
because i get better 2g coverage on orange than tmobile but i use tmobile for 3g?
Will the phone automatically roam onto the other network without a dropped call?
depends on what virgin paid for they have pid for the use of oranges 2g network
Well waddya know?
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2011/10/10/virgin-connects-mobile-network-with-orange/
Still not active but 'later this month' is better than 'later this year'. Now they just have to explain why all my phones have been limited to 300kb/s. Rumour has it that all their old accounts are throttled.
My Virgin phone (SIM) can connect to the Orange Network. You are supposed to text 'Yes' to 789777.
Ah ha. They seem to have kept that quiet then. When did you find out about that? It wasn't working earlier this year.
Ah, nm. I've found the announcement on their forums.
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Mobile/Orange-mobile-network-now-available-to-Virgin-Media-customers/td-p/764593
Wasn't that long ago then :)
AndrueC - about 300k is the limit of 3G so it's possible your phone doesn't support HSDPA/3.5G and not the network...
"Orange and T-Mobile 3G network to use each other's network" - but shirley it is now the same company so hardly "roaming". They've been doing this on 2G for a while now.
One thing missing from this article but included in the announcement is "proper" integration of the 2G networks. It's been possible to roam on to each other network for a while, but the phone actually disconnected and switched networks.
The 2G networks will be able to do seamless handover once the 2G upgrade is rolled out (estimated dates can be found by searching). That may also improve coverage and user experience as calls should no longer drop when switching.
@ichilton:My phone is an HTC Desire and when I put my colleague's SIM into it it will get speeds into the Mb/s. I'm not the only one to have encountered this:
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Mobile/HSDPA-download-speed/td-p/673473
@ichilton
384Kbps.
@AndrueC
Teach you to pick a better provider in future.
O2 also limits mobile speed.
Please could you clarify if that includes 3G data from a smartphone, or if it's only dongles?