T-mobile-Orange roaming in Central London

[CapitalLife]

Hi,

In the UK T-Mobile and Orange have merged and you can use the signal from either network if you have one of their sim cards in your berry. So far so good, I just switched to T-mobile (PAYG) and stuck in their sim, and was back up and BBM-ing in no time. However I was somewhere in London and my 9700 asked me if I wanted to turn on data now that I was roaming

I looked and the carrier info at the top of the screen said "T-Mobile Orange" which is obviously 'foreign' to my sim card as it isn't straight T-mobile. So obviously I enabled data roaming and when I moved locations it went back to just showing T-Mobile. Anyone had any experience of this and any ideas as to whether this is going to become more widespread? I'd rather not leave the roaming option on.

[DangerMouseUK]

Yes unfortunately until the networks merge into one, you will have to leave Data Roaming turned on, and at that T-Mobile<>Orange are only sharing 2G, I've been told 3G is imminent, but the same problem will remain.

This sharing has been active for a number of months now by the way.

The only tip I can give you, is if you are not a big fan of roaming charges in europe to remember to turn off data roaming when you go on holiday.

Charges whilst on T-Mobile are of course the same as if you were on your home network, the phone just can't distinguish between T-Mobile being a foreign network or not as they have different network codes.

Ta

[ste1164]

If you do end up roaming on orange you will not be charged extra for doing so. Just your standard t-mobile rate.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[CapitalLife]

Thanks for the replies - having read them, I finally made it into a T-Mobile store yesterday and they told me that there would be no extra charges (despite that not being a major concern, or indeed mentioned by me). The bloke also said that they would be getting their act together at some point in the future, and then roaming would cease to be a problem. Suggested that I put a note in the calendar to remind me just before I have to travel abroad I should switch roaming off (I just use Wifi when abroad).

[DangerMouseUK]

Having said that if you're on Orange I'd sneak around the Travel Data bundles they offer, they have one called Travel Data Daily which works in Europe, its 2mb for 2GBP - daily - so on a 14 day trip it would come to 28 pounds - 2mb a day is ample to receive all emails and chat on BBM - although browsing the web might cut into that rather sharply. However for normal BB useage its fine.

The tariff is also quite handy because the 2GBP for 2MB charge would only be levied if you actually sent or received data that day, however 1kb would be charged at 2GBP so for Blackberrys that use 10kb a day just to stay in touch with the network, you would be levied that charge every single day, however, I find that 2GBP a day for use on my personal phone to keep the blackberry service active is worthwhile, and if you commonly use about 1-1.5mb a day - which is roughly what BB users use, its better than paying the flat data rate.

March 1st is when all Orange customers will be forcibly dumped onto T-Mobile's network - not sure about T-Mob - and 3G is planned for later this year - read - August.

When they manage to update all their kit to have the same network code and name, well, who knows, I'd say 2012 or even 2013 by which time 2G and 3G might almost be obsolete !