topic Re: Data Roaming in Greece slow or completely unusable in Roaming

Data Roaming in Greece slow or completely unusable

groovy100 — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 14:39:53 GMT

While roaming in Greece with my Samsung S24 Ultra and an EE monthly contract SIM with no spend cap, I experienced serious difficulties getting any stable internet connection even in the centre of Athens, let alone on well-populated, touristy islands.

My tablet, which has a Vodafone UK SIM card had flawless data connection throughout the country and so did my second SIM on the same phone, which is from Tele2 in Sweden.

The EE SIM performed so badly that I ended up using the Swedish SIM or Vodafone UK hotspot to access the internet as 90% of the time, EE's roaming data were either slow to the point of unusable slow or the phone was being rejected by all available roaming networks.

Again, the Swedish SIM was fine on the same dual-SIM device.

EE's customer service couldn't help but ask me to reset the Android network settings (nuclear option), but that made no difference.

More specifically:

When roaming on NOVA, I was connecting to "5G" or "4G+" but getting 0.95 Mbps on Speedtest.net

and 1.5 Mbps on fast.com

The Cosmote network was even worse.

Look at the difference between two identical Galaxy S24 Ultras, one with a local Cosmote SIM and the other with my EE SIM roaming on Cosmote.

Right next to each other, the EE SIM was being relegated to 2G (Edge).

If I tried to select a network manually, I'd end up with:

VODAFONE: NOT ALLOWED

NOVA: ALLOWED, 5G or 4G+, CRAWLING DATA SPEEDS OF 1.5 Mbps max

COSMOTE: 10% of the time, fast 5G, then it would switch to either 2G (Edge) or NO NETWORK 90% of the time (when the second Tele2 SIM on the same device or nearby devices with other SIMs were getting steady 5G roaming on COSMOTE all day every day for days). See below. Same phone. Tele2 SIM: Super fast roaming data on Cosmote. EE SIM: Emergency calls only.

The SIM card is clean and properly inserted into the tray.

This is not a case of SIM card malfunction. The device was able to connect on something but that something most of the time was a 2G connection or 4G with 2G speeds.

My guess after extensive testing and troubleshooting including multiple devices, is that EE's roaming agreements with networks in Greece results in EE roaming traffic being severely de-prioritised to give priority to roaming partners with better agreements such as Vodafone and Tele2.

Re: Data Roaming in Greece slow or completely unusable

20lukefowler24 — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 23:19:31 GMT

you should make ee give you a refund on your bill for your time on holiday, for example if you were on holiday for 2 weeks you should only have to pay half of your bill, that throttling is unacceptable

Re: Data Roaming in Greece slow or completely unusable

Chris_B — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 03:58:51 GMT

@groovy100 When roaming you are not using the EE network, EE are not throttling your network speed it’s not their network. Did you try a manual network search ?

@20lukefowler24 refunded for what roaming isn’t contractual it’s optional. And have you ever read the roaming T&C ? And it’s on 2G as seen in the pictures so no throttling at all. 2G was only intended for calls/texts.

In case you do ever want to read them it’s HERE

Re: Data Roaming in Greece slow or completely unusable

groovy100 — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 10:36:18 GMT

EE are not throttling your network speed it’s not their network. Did you try a manual network search ?

@Chris_B you need to understand how roaming works.

Indeed when roaming, I use a third-party network, however the actual level of service is subject to a roaming agreement between the two peers (EE and the networks in Greece in this case). This controls everything from which exact networks I can access, whether I get 2G, 4G, 5G, the data speeds etc. Your device doesn't just barge into a foreign network and starts using it as if it's on a local SIM.

Here's a GSMA paper that explains how roaming works:

https://www.gsma.com/about-us/regions/latin-america/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/GSMA-Mobile-roaming-web-English.pdf

Notice the Roaming Agreement box.

Furthermore, networks absolutely can and do throttle customers when roaming abroad, subject to agreements between them.

Again, here's an example I found with a simple Google search: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/o2-admits-throttling-eu-roamers-rich-neville/

So, the question is not if but why such agressive throttling is imposed, which renders a service effectively useless.

And it’s on 2G as seen in the pictures so no throttling at all. 2G was only intended for calls/texts

Forcing a subscriber to a 2G service when 5G is available or connecting to a 5G service with extremely low speeds when other SIMs on the same 5G service are fast, are both a form of throttling and both were occurring in my case. So, absolutlely, some form of enforced service degradation appears to be happening.

Lastly, no, contrary to what you write, 2G (Edge) data connectivity is not intended for calls and texts. It is an application-agnostic data transmission service, intended for data traffic of any kind, it doesn't distinguish between calls, texts, video, file downloads etc. It is very slow, which renders it effectively useless for anything else other than e-mails and other text services but that's beyond the point. My point was, why verifiably push and keep an EE roaming subscriber to 2G when the same roaming network offers 5G to other roaming partners of other networks?

Did you try a manual network search?

Yes, I did. I mention it in my original post in detail.