GPRS roaming?

[Guest paradox ewan]

I went on holiday last week, to Portugal.

I had no intention of using GPRS abroad, as the costs were really high.

Before i went, i spoke to orange- "No problems, Just Make sure you are on OPTIMIUS when you are away, they support GPRS with this handset and it will require no reconfiguration from you or us" - Great i thought, its there if i need it.

Half way thru the week, i got the usual work phonecall, that required me to check my email. No probs i thought, ill just download it. Check my phone, right network, full signal bars, and gprs icon on screen.

UNABLE TO PLACE CALL.

So i checked the gprs with my spare handset (sagem g5) and my gprs worked fine.

Phoned 156 and spoke to fax and data, first guy was great, checked all the settings, network status, everything that he could think of, spoke to someone else, and told me to power the unit down (batt off) for 10 mins, and it would work no problems. WRONG

Called 156 again, went through the same converstion, and was told to creat a new dial-up with *#99# in it, and it would work no problem. WRONG

This time is asked for a password and username, tried the usual orange ones, no help.

The last phonecall i made was priceless. I found the weakest link in orange. After discussing the whole problem with a very un-interested muppet, she told me it was a network problem. I explained, very nicely that i had another handset, and it worked with gprs. "why dont you just use that?" getting madder.

I expalined to her, that i needed to use pop3 for email.

She advised me to take my sim card out of my spv, and place it in my other handset, call her back, and she would take me through the settings. Ok, but how is that going to work, can you change settings in the spv without a sim in it? "ehh no" came the reply.

Ok, she said, you need to change the GPRS dial up to +44

Is there a menu in the smartphone to do that i asked? "no" came the reply

I suggested that we could perhaps try a standard dial-up to the net, she reluctantly agreed with me, and then took me through a few menus to do this. "Who is you internet provider?" she asked- Well obviously orange are for gprs i replyed, and i have set up an orange internet account for this reason in the past.

Ok came the reply, do you have your username and password - No Problem. Again she blindly took me through the menus.

I asked what the dial-up details for orange were, ie dial up number.

"im sorry but orange no longer support dial-up access" came the reply.

I am so angry at the level of service i got from Orange in this case, Normally in the past they have been very helpful, or refered me to microsoft. But in this case i found the last operator in fax and data usless.

I recon it must have cost me at least £40 in calls to orange. (still to find that one out)

Right rant over! is there anything i can do to make sure my phone is set up properly for gprs roaming? And should i follow up a complaint to orange, what do you think?

[Guest ajb3000]

Roaming worked flawlessly for me using my SPV in Switzerland and France last week (was at CERN on the Swiss/French boarder so tried them both for fun). Therefore if you can use GPRS in the UK without any problems, there is no reason why it shouldn't have worked abroad. Unless they were having problem with their Internet GPRS (I believe your other phone would have been using WAP GPRS?). One other thing I noticed was that other networks also displayed the G icon on my phone, but it came up with an error whenever I tried to connect.

[Guest Ed]

When I was in Milan the other day, right off the plane the phone detected the "WIND" network and I was on MSN within a minute. Unfort., in the city I was only able to use TIM or OMNITEL or choose between the two on the rare occation. Neither of the latter two seemed to support GPRS, TIM just didn't work (timed out) and OMNITEL said "Unable to place call".

[Guest barncourt]

I went on holiday last week, to Portugal.

UNABLE TO PLACE CALL.  

I have just returned from Majorca with my SPV. GPRS Roaming worked a charm.. I only managed to get it working with Movistar network. Armena and Airtel networks indicated GPRS support, but no luck placing data calls.... Movistar worked a dream - no changes in settings required - I soon forgot that I wasn't in the UK!

Even managed to send a photo-message to my brother-in-law back in the UK without a hitch.... Maybe your problems were associated with the roaming network, rather than a hitch with your handset?

The only problem now is waiting for my next phone bill to come in! :)

[Guest Lojt]

She advised me to take my sim card out of my spv, and place it in my other handset, call her back, and she would take me through the settings. Ok, but how is that going to work, can you change settings in the spv without a sim in it? "ehh no" came the reply.

You know that you can use the phone as normal while talking on it right? Just press the home key...

[Guest paradox ewan]

You know that you can use the phone as normal while talking on it right? Just press the home key...

yeah, i knew that, yhe point was the fax and data support didn't!

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

Frankly... you were given bum advice to start with. The first person you talked to will/should have checked the Scholar database for GPRS availability in Portugal. What they'd have found was a list of "partner" companies in Portugal, plus the services offered by that partner which Orange has TESTED and endorses. And unless Orange have spent the last two months testing everything in sight (which they haven't) I can almost guarantee that GPRS was NOT listed. (Mainly because the database is YEARS out of date.) So, whoever told you that "GPRS will be OK" was NOT getting their information from Orange official sources. That, at least, gives you some sort of a case when complaining/demanding a refund.

A series of things that you DON'T tell us raise questions. WHich phone did you use to call 156? SPV or Sagem? If the CSD connection worked (i.e. you WERE calling 156 from the SPV) why not use CSD to download the email?

Orange doesn't support dialup to its OWN ISP (Orange.net) for the excellent reason that they closed it down last December. France Telecom owns both Orange AND Freeserve - so they advised all Orange.net customers to sign up for a freeserve "no ties" account. You can even sign up by phone - and 156 will tell you the number (if asked the right questions.) If you've got an ISP for your computer at home you could even have used THAT dialup number (and if you'd forgotten it, 156 have a list of the commonest ones) Sadly, most ISPs won't take incoming calls to their 0845 numbers from a mobile - Freeserve (thanks to their connection with Orange) is one of the few exceptions. Now I don't work for Orange, I can cheerfully give out the number I'd have been itching to back when I did - and they can't fire me for doing so! - +44845 7576333 is the dialup number for BT Click. Any username, any password (but there must BE one, don't leave the fields blank!) I use it for testing ISP problems when I'm fixing PC's. It would, I suspect, have got you out of trouble... and got the 156 TSR who gave it you a reprimand for doing so.

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