In message , at 20:56:00 on Sat, 10 Mar 2012,
Phil remarked:
Roland Perry writes:

I use data on the move a lot. And was very disappointed on a recent
trip to London when several times I could get a 2.5G signal, and
"connect", but data was extremely slow (order of a few bytes per
second).
Often in the middle of cities the networks can get very congested, if you
want to stream radio to your phone you are better off in the suburbs.

I only want to collect my email.

I am suprised you needed to use 2.5G in London, in my experience 3G
coverage is pretty unversal. Even in rural Shropshire I rarely need to
use 2.5G.

I was in the basement of a hotel, and the only Vodafone coverage in the
room was 2.5G. From bitter experience I also know there wasn't any
Vodafone 3G coverage in the departure lounges at my local airport. More
recently I couldn't get any 3G, or 2.5G throughput, in a country pub a
few miles from Derby.

Is there no domestic "roaming" between carriers?

No there isn't (apart from between the two carriers who recently
merged: T-Mobile and Orange).
3 also roam onto Orange (2.5G) where they have no network
coverage. AFAIK they don't roam onto Orange 3G or T-Mobile.

Do they still do that - I had an idea they'd stopped because they were
getting too big a bill from Orange for the 2.5G roamed data (which
they'd sold to subscribers at a cheap flat rate).
--
Roland Perry