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Very disappointed with EE roaming service in all countries

mackieap
Explorer

I moved across to EE from Vodafone back in March 2023. One of Vodafone's strong points was unlimited roaming, including tethering, in 83 countries across the world with no speed cap or any kind of throttling. It genuinely works as if you are on your home network. I assumed - seeing as EE is the other. major network in the UK, and I was paying for a contract which promised equivalent service (use my UK plan as if I was at home in EU, US, Canada etc.) - the experience using EE would be similar. 

I was wrong. The service EE offers whilst roaming is far worse than that offered by Vodafone. Why? 

1. It's very clear EE employs speed/traffic management i.e. throttling on users who are roaming. In central Washington DC and Manhattan last week I was testing speeds using the Google service (searching "speed test" on the search engine and then following the built-in prompts) and getting 2-3mbps download despite having a full 5G signal. If I switched to the Ookla app, I got better speeds (up to 300mbps in some cases in the same location), but with 300ms+ latency and it took some time for full speed to be reached i.e. the 'speedometer' ramped up very slowly, rather than flicking to the speed available almost instantly like it does at home.

2. EE have also very poor network agreements. On arrival in the US you can use either T-Mobile or AT&T and IME it will switch to T-Mobile first. Unfortunately however the speeds available via T-Mobile are so slow as to be almost unusable. So you must manually switch to AT&T. It's a similar case in Germany, where inexplicably EE has done a roaming deal with Vodafone DE who only offer EDGE, so you need to manually change network again in order to be able to do anything. I do wonder whether those at EE responsible for doing these deals actually travel to the countries they're responsible for? 

All this in comparison to Vodafone which in my experience as 10+ years as a customer travelling all over the world, 'just works.' 

I will be moving back as soon as my EE contract is up in March.

10 REPLIES 10
Normskiii
Visitor

I’m in Italy at the moment. It’s worse than 3 G I now have to buy a data sim from mobimatter. It’s definitely going to influence me next purchase. 
I’ve been to Bulgaria France and Germany all the data speeds are very poor now across Europe too. 

ak370
Investigator
Investigator

I can confirm the problems are ongoing in Germany unlike in other EU countries. Crossed into Germany in different places but somehow always get connected to Vodafone EDGE and have to manually switch to O2.

Wilsons71
Visitor

I totally  agree, I have had nothing but problems. Roaming and they are always trying to blame someone else. 
had problems in Mexico,  Dominican Republic , Egypt , Belgium , Germany and Denmark   and was told no problem with the system and when I return to uk was told it was due to something not activated in account which I always specify world roaming and no spend caps.

But each time I travel I have problems 

i work in main land Europe on a regular basis and connectivity is very poor .

as I s the Uk coverage now.

My contract is up in November and I will be moving to another network.

i have been with Ee / orange since around 1998.

as for the customer assistance 150 

it is a complete waste of time.

 

 

JPun001
Explorer

Completely agred! 
i am currently in Germany and I upgraded by EE plan to eu roaming last month believing this woulf be helpful for my business trip, its been utter nonsense. The data is not slow, its just non existent! I waited for 10 mins and still didn’t load so had to use my work phone’s hotspot to arrange uber to hotel. Now i am using just work phone!  I thought my personal phone was broken. 

i been with EE for over 10 years and have both phone & home broadband but it is now decisive for me to move on to better network provider.

EE need to seriously look into this issue if they don’t want to loose more customers like me. 

Peter_W
EE Community Support Team

Hi @JPun001, welcome to the EE Community!

Since you arrived in Germany, have you managed to successfully connect to a local network and load a page, even if this is slower than usual?

Having a roaming pass active on your phone isn't the same as having the ability to roam enabled, and you do still need to set this up before heading away. 

Peter

Hello Peter, 
Of course I have connected to local network, this is not the first time I use Data roaming. This is how I connect on my workphone all the time. 
I waited for over 30 mins still not a single page is loading. The network line shows full bar with ‘E’ sign but nothing loads at all. 


Kind Regards Jamuna Pun Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
Leanne_T
EE Community Support Team

Hi @JPun001 

Thanks for coming back to us and letting us know what you have tried already. 

Can I just check, do you get the same data speeds on different local networks? Which device are you using? 

Are calls and texts working OK? 

Leanne.

For the customer – You need to manually select the O2 network, and then data worked for me.

For EE – CAN YOU PLEASE SORT OUT YOUR ROAMING AGREEMENTS?!

It is unbelievable how ignorant EE is on this. There are so many reports, including in this thread, yet nothing gets done?!

If EE only has a roaming agreement with O2 in Germany, then please configure roaming profiles to select this network as the default. It should not pick up Vodafone if there is no data roaming agreement.