If possible, please don't let this end in a Vodafone is crap thread. I only want to ask about their 4G roaming offering.
If e.g. I would go to Germany, would it only be possible to use 4G on the German Vodafone network? Or on all four networks (wherever 4G is available)?

Where it is available.

Info at http://help.vodafone.co.uk/system/se...CLE_ID=2077589

I saw that before, but on another website (can't remember which one it was) it did mention something about partner networks and that made it sound a bit like it wasn't available with every network. I was wondering if someone had any experience. Btw, do Vodafone allow access to all networks in Germany in general? Pretty sure that access to the Deutsche Telekom network wasn't allowed before.

Partner network would = roaming partner. You would need to check their roaming page and see who is listed as a roaming partner in each country you are interested in.

Unless I am completely blind, but I don't think Vodafone mentions their roaming partners anymore on their website.

They do here I think

http://www.vodafone.com/content/inde...-us/where.html

That just seems to show their local and partner networks across the world, but not roaming partners.

True but you would guess they they would roam on to a partner network than a non partner network.

My question was if they allowed access to all networks in Germany. It is quite obvious that Vodafone Germany is their local network and that I have access to it. That doesn't answer my question though.

It seems common now, that only a couple of foreign mobile networks are enabled
by a 'home' network for roamng.

I'm on EE. In Germany I could not get my phone to connect to anything other than Telekom DE or E-Plus, in The Netherlands only T-Mobile NL, and KPN; and in South Africa only MTN (Vodacom and Cell C were not available there). In the latter case It was the same for my colleagues who were all on 02 (only MTN available)

That's why I can't believe that Vodafone allows access to all networks in Germany, especially seeing none of the UK networks allow access to Vodafone Germany, besides Vodafone themselves.
The specific problem I am having is that I will be visiting family, who live in a small village. And basically all the networks have pretty poor 3G and 4G coverage, only Deutsche Telekom seem to have decent 4G coverage according to their map. As Three doesn't offer 4G roaming and I found the performance with the Euro Internet Pass was very poor (even in Berlin) and it's too expensive on top, they aren't an option. EE roaming data allowance is too small, O2 don't offer 4G roaming, Deutsche Telekom pay as you go and German MVNOs (again pay as you go) using the Deutsche Telekom don't offer 4G. So Vodafone would have been the last option and that's why I wanted to know, who their roaming partners are and if all could have been used for 4G roaming.

Vodafone does have access to Telecom DE but have an aggressive steering platform in place which tries its best to stop your handset using a non-Vodafone network.

The phone will connect to Vodafone DE by default (if available) as the Voda SIM will have Voda DE saved as a 'preferred network'. On connection, the Voda UK network will receive a message from Voda DE asking for authentication, and this will be instantly granted.

On the other hand - if, say, the phone tries to connect to Telecom; Voda UK will not authenticate the connection. After 30 seconds or so the phone gives up, by which time the system hopes you'll have moved position and have Voda DE coverage. However, if the handset tries 3 times in a row to connect to Telecom, then the connection will be allowed.

The idea is Voda don't want you to use a non-preferred network unless you literally have no other option, in which case they settle for the smaller revenue from a non-preferred partner than no revenue at all.

If you're manually selecting a network it often returns an error or 'no access'. Keep persisting (or on iPhone leave it alone on 'no service' for a while) and magically it will connect O2 employ similar wily tricks.

Thank you very much for the reply!

O2 deffinitely do roam onto the other South African Networks, at least they did when i was last there over the summer. I had superb coverage as my O2 Contract SIM had no trouble switching betweek Vodacom, MTN & Cell-C, this includes my previous two visits in 2006 & 2009/2010.

Interesting. We were there in May last year. I've been many times previously over the last 7 years, but with Vodafone, and that always jumped about between the three networks.
Same for my O2 colleagues, mind you they don't pay quite the same attention to such matters as I do, so perhaps they did have the ability to jump to VC and CellC but didn't notice. MTN's coverage is very good there anyway,