Can't use my t mobile phone abroad - help please

englishpremier

englishpremier

englishpremier

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Can anyone help me with this? I'm on t mobile and currently in europe, however my phone isn't connecting to any euro network meaning I can't call text or anything.

Presumably I need to call t mobile, but I can't find a number that will work from outside the uk.
 
englishpremier said:
Can anyone help me with this? I'm on t mobile and currently in europe, however my phone isn't connecting to any euro network meaning I can't call text or anything.

Presumably I need to call t mobile, but I can't find a number that will work from outside the uk.
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is that mobile from tmobile or have you bought it second hand ?
 
The mobile is from t mobile direct, but for fine reason it seems all roaming is barred, as I can't connect to any network. I'm in luxembourg st the moment.

I can from the gf vodafone, but that number above looks like a mobile and will cost loads. Eek!
 
you are supposed to call them to enable international roaming before you leave the UK as its not a standard network feature, they cant always enable it when you are abroad, depending on location, so orange told me the other year when I had to do it myself
 
Well i did without a network connection in the end.

Back in the UK now and I can only connect via 3G at a maximum of 0.04Mbps. T-mobile twitter have no idea what's wrong.
 
That's the rough max speed of 2G - you sure you're just not bugged? Did you reboot?

Other stuff to confirm:

Not done anything to the UMTS settings
Not played with frequencies
Not done anything with a battery saver
 
No changed to the phone at all. Set at Auto gsm/WCDMA. Setting to WCDMA only makes no difference. Phone has been rebooted several times.

The twitter team are trying to tell me that I need to pay for a booster to get 1.8Mbps yet i have evidence of others on the exact same plan who have HSDPA working.

The executive office called a few weeks ago, and I told them everything was fine, as at the time i thought it had been sorted. Obviously not.

As you can imagine, i'm not best pleased.
 
For future reference the number you dial abroad to speak to t-m UK helpdesk is likely free - this is extremely common and included in negotiations with roaming partners (for example I called the employee and consumer help lines from Barbados on Orange and it was free) as long as you've setup roaming first. If you havn't then all the big 5 can have it turned on via their websites iirc or at the very worst just call them and lump the £2 cost, it takes virtually no time to enable roaming and if you're really nice you might be able to get them to call you back to sort it.

The other limit that this might be is total data transfer - you havn't hit the monthly limit have you? T-M doesn't kill your ability to have data but limits it to GPRS speeds basically. I presume you have Web'n'Talk+ or whatever the name of that crap booster is that allows for speeds greater than 378kbps?

While the twitter people for all networks are pretty good they are not technical and are extremely bad for real problems like the one you have. You really need second line user equipment support.
 
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Thanks for the info. Nah T-mobile couldn't turn on romaing while i was already out of the UK. Apparently they tried. Oddly enough I was in France and German, so both home countries of T-mobile's owners. Oh well.

Apparently data has completely fallen off my account settings now. They are looking into it. Grrr
 
englishpremier said:
Thanks for the info. Nah T-mobile couldn't turn on romaing while i was already out of the UK. Apparently they tried. Oddly enough I was in France and German, so both home countries of T-mobile's owners. Oh well.

Apparently data has completely fallen off my account settings now. They are looking into it. Grrr
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I was in Germany last week and i called them from my hotel room asking them to turn on my roaming.

2 minutes later i get a signal and all is done - if they said they can't turn on your roaming whilst you are abroad, they are lying.
 
You learn something new every day - T-M are still not shipping [EDIT] all [/EDIT] SIMs with Roaming profile data. This is where the SIM contains the data in order to connect to a remote network and is usually (read - pretty much every other network) enabled by default. Because they couldn't do a SIM update via a 3rd party network they couldn't turn roaming on and you were a sad panda :(

If the data bundle had fallen off your account then you still would be able to use data as a charged item instead of part of your included bundle, I suspect they are lying to you.
 
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I've never been able to use T-Mobile abroad despite enabling roaming via their call centre, adding Euro boosters and trying to connect to networks manually.

I'm still in correspondence with them via letter one over it.

Myshra: I'm guessing my SIM could be one such SIM? Have you got a source for the info so I can quote it in my next letter?
 
Its odd as in the end they lost out on the money I would have paid for the data bundles. Instead I stood outside McDonalds etc..

Whenever I tried to join a network it said "your sim card does not allow this". The twitter team took my CC details but said they would only charge the deposit if they could get it to work.

In the end, they said their network has no way of knowing where I am and so couldn't turn on data.

That was that.

The issue now at home, is no data connection at all. It was 0.04Mbps. Now they've played about with the account and it's nothing. No 2G+, no 3G just nothing.
 
Russinating said:
Myshra: I'm guessing my SIM could be one such SIM? Have you got a source for the info so I can quote it in my next letter?
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Maybe, but it could be other reasons and to them I'm an anonymous engineer etc... so I don't really have a point of reference for you. You got a replacement SIM didn't you? If not just say your phone is acting up saying insert SIM a lot and you'd like a new SIM. Then make them refresh all the products on your account and you'll get your SIM updates including roaming, dual network coverage with Orange etc...

In the end, they said their network has no way of knowing where I am and so couldn't turn on data.
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I'd love to know how roaming works for their other customers then :) . Anyway the basic version of roaming is this.
You SIMs special number (don't give this to anyone else btw) is made up of parts which are <number use, always 89><countrycode><network ident><user ID><check digit> so obviously your SIM card knows where it belongs and on whos network. The userID is useless to it, it doesn't know what it means but the home network does and this allows you to have calls routed to the phone the SIM is in, get billed etc..
When you roam you send these details to the network you're roaming on. Hosting network goes "AH HA! you don't belong here - let me check with your home network" and there's some secret science where the 2 networks exchange these details and the home network tells the hosting network what you can/can't do. Voila - the hosting network acts like your home network but for each billable item it sends the details (along with their fee) to your home network.

Honestly it's really simple and hardly rocket science. It goes wrong 99% of the time because the home network says "don't allow him on your network - I won't pay you" and because the hosting network has no recourse here - you're stuck.

SIMs need to have some data on them in order to roam in the first place in order to talk to other networks, you've probably seen this before as a "SIM UPDATE FROM <network>" text which told you to restart the phone. This data is possibly missing.

Anyway, back to "they said their network has no way of knowing where I am and so couldn't turn on data." now you can see why this is just crap - the hosting network obviously knows where it is - it requested permission on your behalf to use it's services and the home network told it to go away.

These are my own thoughts not my companies etc... this was a simplistic version of GSM roaming partnership.
 
Nice insight.

Well my data is back on but i'm getting 0.93Mbps when i was getting 1.8Mbps before. From what i read somewhere else, I think T-mobile have introduced a new cap and not told their existing customers, not that they told them about the old 1.86Mbps cap.

Additionally, when I search for networks now, my phone previously showed T-Mobile. it now shows T-mobile and T-mobile (3G) as two separate networks. It's also doing it for Orange and Vodafone too.

What on earth is going on?
 
Myshra said:
If the data bundle had fallen off your account then you still would be able to use data as a charged item instead of part of your included bundle, I suspect they are lying to you.
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I think you've miss-understood. Sometimes there are technical issues with accounts where the features such as internet, calls, texts, roaming etc can sometimes deactivate for some reason or another.

If this happens and say the data feature has deactivated, he wouldn't be able to do any at all. Nada. It would just stop.

Normally a quick call to customer services sorts this as they'll just add it back on for you, or if you don't want to go through the hassle of answering all the scripted technical questions first, go into a store and ask them to call their retail support to see if data is activated on the account.

I work in a t-mobile store and dealt with it before, so yes it does happen, and no they're not lying, just badly worded :)


edit: also, nice one Myshra for explaining all that, well put! :)

englishpremier said:
Additionally, when I search for networks now, my phone previously showed T-Mobile. it now shows T-mobile and T-mobile (3G) as two separate networks. It's also doing it for Orange and Vodafone too.

What on earth is going on?
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Sounds like something seriously odd has gone on with your account, I'd pop into a store and explain it to them as they'll sort it faster than customer service can (I know, I apologise, the customer services are notoriously crap if you get through to our overflow centre in the philippines rather than one of the UK ones :( )
 
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englishpremier said:
Nice insight.

Well my data is back on but i'm getting 0.93Mbps when i was getting 1.8Mbps before. From what i read somewhere else, I think T-mobile have introduced a new cap and not told their existing customers, not that they told them about the old 1.86Mbps cap.

Additionally, when I search for networks now, my phone previously showed T-Mobile. it now shows T-mobile and T-mobile (3G) as two separate networks. It's also doing it for Orange and Vodafone too.

What on earth is going on?
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Bar technical issues it could just be the crap weather England is currently experiencing or possibly the cell is crowded, can't really say from just a days worth of testing sorry :(

The fact that you're seeing each network twice is because for some reason your phone is treating each radioband as a different network despite the identifiers the networks send out are the same on both bands - you're seeing 1800Mhz T-M and 2100Mhz T-M (2 and 3G bands respectively). I have zero clue why it's doing this, it should see T-M and T-M Orange + the others. As you're not seeing this I still think your SIM is trashed / you havn't had the right SIM updates.

The only special case is if you live near hatfield - you might see something like this if you do for test network purposes.
 
When you roam onto the three network share ;) . AFAIK their deployment max is 7.2 but the internet seems to suggest they have 10/14.4 sites (I have no idea how true this is). Wikipedia says they have HSPA+ which is >14.4 - this sounds hard to believe considering how much flak they get and the ROI on higher speed sites sucks - people just don't need the speed currently.

Slinky might be able to see this more than me because he can see their intranet where the details will be :) He may also have a picocell in his shop.
 
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