Meteor roaming in UK failure

yaledo

Fuming I am!

Any other meteor customers have trouble attaching to T-Mobile UK network to take advantage of the cheap roaming rates? They have assured me my case is unusual.

Big Meteor selling point (for me) is the cheap roaming arrangement with T-Mobile UK. Went to UK, arrive at Birmingham Airport, can't select T-Mobile, have to use very expensive Orange instead.
Contact Meteor when I get home, customer service tells me they have no control over whether there will be coverage in specific locations in the UK. I tell them there is no doubt that there is excellent coverage at Birmingham Int'l Airport, but they don't accept this, "Technical department says it must be a coverage issue, and we have no way to raise a trouble ticket with T-Mobile UK" - and this gem "It's the luck of the draw, really" whether I will be able to register with network or not.

Fuming, disgusted at being fobbed off like this, and unable to see any way of making progress on the issue, I say goodbye and hang up.

Other than this, I have been reasonably happy with Meteor, so I'm reluctant to change network... But after being denied an advertised service, and then being fobbed off with nonsense by customer service (no coverage in an airport, yeah right!), I feel I need to vote with my feet.

Do let me know (by PM or in this thread) if you are a meteor customer, and have had trouble OR no trouble attaching to T-Mobile UK


(PS - I work as a software developer of low-level mobile telecoms networks stuff, but I have no business with any Irish operators other than as a concerned consumer)

Stevek101

Here I've been to England a million times in the last year. I never had a single probably and in fact the majority of the time I got free texts and normal 9 cent calls.

Doctor DooM

I used to work for a mobile provider and have heard many stories like this.

Unfortunately, meteor are correct- as long as roaming is activated on your account and they charge you correctly, there is nothing more they can do. T- Mobile would just laugh at them, effectively.

There is ALWAYS some risk when roaming, I'm afraid. luck of the draw!

Sorry I dont have bettererer new for you.

yaledo

Thanks for the replies, guys... Stevek, I'm glad to hear at least that the advertised service does work for some people.

SDoom, I appreciate your point that as far as they are concerned, I have roaming enabled and that's all they can do. But surely it is quite a simple and routine matter for Meteor to say to T-Mobile UK "On such a date at such a place, subscriber X tried to attach to your network and received error code XYZ- please investigate this and fix it". Especially since the particular roaming agreement is a bug selling point for their network.

Instead, they fob me off me with the bafflingly stupid assertion that must have been a location with poor/no coverage, even though that location is an international airport. I pointed out that this was nonsense, but they persisted.

yaledo

yaledo wrote:

a bug selling point

Hmmm that's not quite what I meant to write... Did I mention I'm a software developer? I should probably fix that... but sure as long as I know it's there, and it's not causing a big problem, well it's not really hurting anyone right now - I'll put it on the TODO list.

chrislad

Again, the customer service agent is right. Whilst there should be T-Mobile coverage everywhere pretty much, it is possible that they might have had network problems at the time, and in the event of such occurances, low level users (roaming people) get bumped off to accomadate for the people who use the service normally. There's not much Meteor can do. The agreement is there. I've used it plenty, and have had no issues. What I would suggest trying is a sim replacement if you have a sim card that is over 18 months old. As was said, once Meteor have roaming enabled on your account (which isn't even necessary for all customers, bar bill paying ones within their first two month, as the UK is a country they have roaming agreements with which take from your credit in real time), there's little they can do regarding a foreign network.

If it does happen again, ring them while you're in England. They will reimburse you for the cost of the call for a technical issue, but 1905 should be free in all countries where the EU Roaming rates are present.

Thirdfox

Went to England this summer and was able to use the T-Mobile network without any problems... maybe you just got the short end of a stick?

JohnnieM

You said you couldnt select T mobile>>>>Presumably you did a Manual network search in the airport .. Did or did not T mobile show up in the search results?Was it at this point that you tried to select it and then got a fail?

jimmycrackcorm

JohnnieM wrote:

You said you couldnt select T mobile>>>>Presumably you did a Manual network search in the airport .. Did or did not T mobile show up in the search results?Was it at this point that you tried to select it and then got a fail?

Second that, if you can't pick T-Mobile in the manual selection list then you're out of luck with coverage. When I was with Meteor I set my phone to select T-Mobile as a preferred provider for going through the North and generally it would select that, however it would occasionaly go to Orange and O2 also depending on coverage along the A5.

yaledo

Yes - tried Manual select, T-Mobile appeared, clicked connect, 30 seconds later (or so) 'request not permitted' is displayed on the handset... Tried several times - same result each time.

Interesting point about "low-level" users such as roamers being the first to get denied service when the network is in trouble... Bear in mind though - this was at an Int'l airport - where networks are always strong in order not to miss out on the roamers.

My own suspicion is that this problem may be related to number portability -
for example: that my (087) number is already registered on the T-Mobile network from when I was previously a Vodafone customer, so maybe it makes a (bad) assumption that I'm still Vodafone. Even without this assumption, NP still strikes me as the most obvious link in the chain which would cause a failure like this (which happened repeatedly during my 4 day trip in England).

I'll carry on regardless - all the indications are that this is not a regular occurrence for other Meteor subscribers. I was surprised by the very poor standard of customer service I received.

Thanks Chrislad for the advice about calling cust service from England next time it happens - this strikes me as a sensible course of action. Hopefully it won't even be an issue.

I've had no problems using mine on the t-mobile network either. When did you port from Vodaphone?

Doctor DooM

yaledo wrote:

SDoom, I appreciate your point that as far as they are concerned, I have roaming enabled and that's all they can do. But surely it is quite a simple and routine matter for Meteor to say to T-Mobile UK "On such a date at such a place, subscriber X tried to attach to your network and received error code XYZ- please investigate this and fix it". Especially since the particular roaming agreement is a bug selling point for their network.

Instead, they fob me off me with the bafflingly stupid assertion that must have been a location with poor/no coverage, even though that location is an international airport. I pointed out that this was nonsense, but they persisted.

If they did do ask what you ask, how would that help you? It still happened and could still happen at any time.

To put it in terms familiar to you, can you guarentee software you had no hand in creating or use is completely 100% bug free and will never crash, or error out? This is effectively what Irish networks have to do. If meteor made a mistake here, it was in not correctly informing you of the situation.

Its a known issue for all the networks. It is not really bafflingly stupid- network could have been down, or no bandwidth available spare- and being completely honest with you ,Irish networks have less than no pull with the English ones. I've dealt with these issues many times before...

BTW, I'm in Software too...

jimmycrackcorm

yaledo wrote:

My own suspicion is that this problem may be related to number portability -
for example: that my (087) number is already registered on the T-Mobile network from when I was previously a Vodafone customer, so maybe it makes a (bad) assumption that I'm still Vodafone. Even without this assumption, NP still strikes me as the most obvious link in the chain which would cause a failure like this (which happened repeatedly during my 4 day trip in England).

Number portability is irrelevant, the sim id is the one that is used to link you and your network. I.e. how would T-mobile know for example whether your 987 number is a vodafone, O2, Meteor or Three number, but your sim id is network specific.

Random

All mobile phone subscribers are assigned a unique 15-digit IMSI number to allow foreign mobile networks to identify subscribers from abroad.

Occidental

Yaledo,

Passed through Birmingham airport twice last week, two users, one on 087 and the other on 085, but both Meteor sims. T-Mobile worked perfectly and from what I can remember, full strength signal.

HiredGun

I have the feeling that there was a problem with the communication between the Meteor and the T-Mobile network, the signalling link. When you land in the UK the T-Mobile network queries the Meteor network whether you are allowed to roam, and in the case of a pre-pay customer you still have credit. If this signalling link is down or malfunctioning the T-Mobile network will refuse access. From that point onward your phone will put the T-Mobile network in the so called "forbidden PLMN list", in other words a list with networks your phone thinks are forbidden and it will not try to attach itself to it again until you manually select the network again and override the list. As said before, you mobile number has nothing to do with. Once in a while there are problems with the signalling link that get usually get resolved fairly quickly.

foggy_lad

my only suggestion would be the "3" network same cost as home

chrislad

Are you just going from thread to thread bad mouthing Meteor? Seems that way.

Random

chrislad wrote:

Are you just going from thread to thread bad mouthing Meteor? Seems that way.

He's moved from O2 to Meteor... next is Vodafone no doubt