The major operators in the USA, as part of their network upgrades, have switched off their 3G services, so you may notice a change to your roaming experience (including service availability, coverage areas, and speeds) when visiting the USA.
To help minimise any potential disruption to your roaming experience we have made available 4G Calling while in the US, however, this is dependent on the US operator’s network availability and device compatibility.
4G Calling will allow you to continue to make and receive calls & SMS over the US network’s 4G/LTE network, so more network capacity will improve call setup times, and call quality and allow you to continue to use your data roaming at faster speeds.
To see if your phone is compatible, please refer to “Who can get 4G Calling?” section of our “How do I use 4G Calling?” help page or our Device guides for your specific device.
To access 4G Calling abroad, you’ll need to make sure your phone is updated to the latest software version and you have VoLTE available whilst in the UK.
4G/LTE might not be available in some areas, in these cases we advise customers to connect to T-Mobile, using the device’s manual selection within the settings menu. Visit our Device guides to learn how.
Customers who do not have a 4G calling compatible device are advised to ensure it is on the T-Mobile network (2G) which would allow voice and SMS (subject to coverage availability), however, please note call quality will be lower as a result and data service may be paused during the call.
To ensure the best roaming experience, we encourage customers to upgrade to a compatible 4G Calling device.
EE Pay Monthly and Pay As You Go customers should visit MyEE or shop.ee.co.uk for more details.
Data-only roaming may occur where your device is unable to use 4G calling when attached to a 4G or 5G US network – customers wishing to use voice or messaging services in this scenario are advised to download a voice and/or messaging app(s) available on the Apple App store or Google Play Store (depending on your device) which utilises data while roaming to provide these services, such as iMessage, Facetime (both of which are part of Apple iOS devices by default) or third-party apps such as Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Viber, Snapchat etc.
To ensure EE customers are able to use their devices while abroad, we work with partner network operators around the world to enable roaming access to their networks.
Many operators are looking to upgrade their networks to expand 4G and 5G coverage/services and to do so requires the switch off older technologies/networks such as 2G and 3G.
Unfortunately, this is out of EE’s control, however, do note EE will continue to ensure 4G Calling is made available where possible to ensure roaming service continuity.
