Hi all,

I am travelling to Spain next month for a week and unfortunately the hotel I'm staying in doesn't offer wifi. I have checked the EE bundles and I think the £25 for 500mb is ridiculous in comparison to other networks' offers, so am reluctant to buy this. I plan to use my phone for Facebook and general browsing quite a lot, along with imessage.

I have a PAYG Three sim and have seen this offers unlimited data on the device for £15. But no tethering (the option is greyed out on my old iPhone 4). Can I put this sim in my old Windows phone and tether my new EE iPhone 6 to this and use it moderately without being disconnected? There'd definitely be no streaming etc and it'd be used carefully. Would Three be able to tell if it's an iPhone tethered to the Windows phone? I can't directly use the three sim in my iPhone because I want to imessage.

I am more than happy to pay for some roaming, but the EE cost seems to be just too much and I feel a little cheated paying through the nose for it in comparison to Three.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Tethering in France using my Three SIM in a Sony Xperia Z3 worked fine, albeit slow.

So long as the device you are connecting to the phone isn't a laptop it worked fine, when I connected my laptop to my phone it wouldn't load anything, yet my iPad worked fine.

Just don't go nuts using it and i'm sure it'll work fine, you'll likely experience problems if you're downloading or streaming lots.

Thanks Connor that's what I wanted to hear. The windows phone will let me open to tether so I was hoping three wouldn't notice if my iPhone was connect to it.

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home

It says here you can't use your phone to tether while using Three at home. It may work it may not. But it's not official policy for it to work.

I used the Euro Internet pass a couple of days ago and when I tried to tether (with Nexus 10), it was detected straight away.

Yeah i've tried it to. Straight away it was detected like denyo.

Likewise, I was in France last week and it wouldn't let me tether from one phone to another

If you just want to send blue iMessages and not green SMS then sticking your Three sim in your iPhone isn't an issue. It will send the imessages over the Three sim's data connection. Your iMessages will still be tied to your iPhone's Apple ID which is the key bit.

That's not complete info. iMessages are sent by the phone number of the SIM on iPhones by default. They CAN be sent by any email address in the Apple ID if you prefer.

iPad's and iPod Touch and Mac's all use the Apple ID, unless there is an iPhone on the same account, then you can select the phone number.

Data abroad on Three is really quite slow in my experience. Getting more than 1Mb in Ireland on any of the available networks was impossible except strangely in the airport, somewhat underground.

Can confirm was slow for me in Vienna and a friend of mine was moaning about 3IT although he said the other roaming partner of WIND was quite good

For the sake of £10 as a one-off I'd just pay the EE rate. Just easier, simpler, no speed restrictions and you'll get 4G on Orange ES.

Using 3 UK's data whilst roaming does seem to get speed throttled, using it in the RoI does have longer ping times as well. I remember when I had a 3 contract with the old 3 Like Home in Australia with a data add-on and the ping times were quite excessive, though once things got in motion speeds were steady if not blistering.

It's routed back through London isn't it? Going to get longer ping times because of that, especially in Oz. I suppose it's you get what you pay for. Personally I'm happy waiting a second or two longer and knowing I've got a bit extra money.

But that only buys something like 100MB. What's the point of 4G if that's all you can use ?

That's my problem. The data on EE really is expensive. Out of principle I don't see why I should pay so much when all the other networks are cheaper for the same or more. I think I'd end up using quite a bit, maybe a gig or so, and that'll cost in excess of £50 :-o

No speed restrictions on EE? Are you sure? When I last went to France earlier this year I had 4G on Orange F but data speeds were severely throttled to useless other than browsing & emailng! So I paid a premium price to buy a data roaming bundle to only ever get less than 1Mbps, yet on my 3 phone on feel at home I got 10-15Mbps in the same location almost same time:

EE speed test on Orange F 4G: http://s18.postimg.org/vgoroi7sp/Screenshot_2015_02_18_19_03_48.png

So I tried my 3 sim in my windows phone and it tethers ok with my iPhone. Is this likely to keep working or will three realise?

Tethering between mobile devices and tablets appears to work fine, however try tethering to a laptop/computer then it will not make any connection. Whilst 3 do not allow any form of tethering abroad (apart from of course Mobile Broadband Plans) they seem to dismiss tethering amoungst mobile devices but not sure for how long.

Excellent news! Thanks guys

As I said, if EE didn't want me to pay through the nose for 500mb then I'd pay for it. But as it stands, I'd rather pay Vodafone, O2 or Three as they offer the same for cheaper.

Thanks again.

Agreed. I personally will just use a temporary pay as you go sim on 3 and roam with that, I don't mind paying EE's prices but certainly not when data speeds are useless.
Last edited by rasseru16 : 08-04-2015 at 16:31

I have to say I find these claims incredible. I have often tried to tether my iPad to my iPhone while in France and it simply will not work as it is detected immediately.

I will be there on Saturday and will report back, in case anything has changed. But, since Feel At Home embraced France last July I have tried many times and was knocked back each and every time.

If you could post your experience it would be greatly appreciated I think I'm going to take the gamble anyway and take the three phone and sim and try the tethering. Hopefully if it's just my iPhone it won't be recognised.

You think it makes a difference if you use a different phone to tether? This is a very old windows 6.1 device with a third party app.

It's probably better with an old device IMO. On modern devices Three have an APN which tethering goes through which in my mind means that they can detect it easier. On older devices especially those which tether through a separate app it won't do this so won't be detected without deep packet inspection.

I will of course, on landing. 16:00 CET on Saturday. But, I have attempted this many, many times and I have always been denied tethering with a splash screen appearing on my iPad.

In other Three countries I use my Three Ireland PAYG SIM which of course does allow tethering.

Three UK won't even accept an iPhone SIM in an iPad now, so they know exactly what's going on.

As soon as I have an update for you, I'll let you know.