Roland Perry writes:


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.

That is true, often 3G doesn't penetrate buildings very well. One of my
local pubs is an example. T-mobile has rock solid 3G outside, but inside
it falls back to Orange 2.5G.

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).
You could be right about roaming data on orange, AFAIK you can
still use orange for voice calls and texts.

I have been experimenting with a 3 SIM in my phone with a view to
switching to their One Plan.

The only place I lost 3G was in the same local pub, I was able to make a
voice call and send/recieve texts. Was unable to use data however.

Phil