Has anyone noticed that Vodafone (and probably others) have started to hide who they have roaming agreements with abroad ?

Before they used to all list them.

Now I know there's actually forced preferential treatment going on when selecting networks abroad, Vodafone certainly do it.

But was wondering if there was still a way to get the networks list out of them ?

In Spain recently it was basically Vodafone ES and Movistar.

Before they used to allow Orange as well and even sometimes Yoigo but it seems they don't allow either of those two anymore.

There's definitely preferential treatment, for example Vodafone UK customers will connect to Vodafone networks abroad, but still be allowed to use others if vodafone is unavailable.

Three list their roaming partners, which I like. Others might tell you if you ask, I once asked O2 for their roaming partners in Italy and the man listed them.

I have recently just been on holiday to Greece and the only network I could use was Vodafone GR, couldn't roam on any other sadly. Speeds were ok, it was coverage being the problem, Wind had better coverage.

Aye Up

There's something going on with the HLR VLR stuff at Vodafone

You can select another network (if they have an agreement with them) power off the phone, then power it back on and it will roam onto that network, then another full reboot after reselection to get back onto the other network.

Don't ask me why, but I guess they're just trying to aggressively keep you on Vodafone branded networks for cost reasons - but it can be done !

That's pretty much exactly why they (and other pan-euros like Telefonica/HW/DT) do it - not much point owning your own networks if you let your customers just use somebody elses!

However, you will always get at least one fallback with another provider in any given country, to make up for variations in coverage. If they have configured the network properly it will usually try and roam back onto the host network at an opportune time though, so they don't end up paying through the nose in wholesale roaming agreements.

This is standard behaviour based on 3GPP standards, rather than Vodafone trickery!

At power on, your mobile will always attempt to re-register with the network it was last successfully registered to. The last registered network has a higher priority.

Your SIM card contains a "preferred operator list" where the mobile network defines which mobile networks should be selected there there is a choice available.

So for example if you get off the plane in Spain and your UK home network is not available. Your phone then searches all networks, and checked the preferred operator list in the SIM for any matches.

if you are Vodafone customer, then chances are high that the first network your mobile registers to is Vodafone Spain based on the preferred operator list. After successful registration, your mobile will then always try to re-register to Vodafone whenever it sees the PLMN network code being transmitted.

When you return to the UK, you mobile looks for the Vodafone PLMN network code. Of course it doesn't find it, so then it searches for the home network.

This behaviour causes problems for the mobile operators, where the home network is actually lower priority than the last registered network. If you are in the border areas of European countries, you can end up almost permanently roaming on a foreign network!

ftp://www.3gpp.org/tsg_cn/WG1_mm-cc-sm/.../N1-99450.doc

Older phones used to let you edit the list of preferred networks on the SIM.

There are several Mobile "alliances", which allow preferential rates across countries. These usually dictate which of the networks is the "preferred" network in a particular country.

Vodafone is one, along with its non owned "partner" networks that use its branding.
Freemove/Bridge is another, DT, Orange, TIM, TeliaSonera and smaller partners like Ote and Eircom
And M2M which is Telefonica (O2), KPN, Telenor, VimpelCom (WIND) etc.

However, it used to be that you could still use an alternative network in the country you were visiting, but the number of partners appears to be dropping, at least in Europe.

I'm on EE, visiting Italy. Preferred network was TIM. Could also use Wind and 3, but not Vodafone.

When I visited Ireland, Meteor was the preferred network. I could also use O2 and Vodafone, but not 3. Go figure.

I don't think 3 has many agreements with Vodafone worldwide (presumably they do in Australia as it's a joint venture...). This is still a bit of a problem when roaming in countries like New Zealand. Vodafone run the only 2G GSM network, and Spark's rural coverage is 3G 850MHz, which isn't supported in many European phones .

When I went to Ireland on Three I could use all of the networks except Vodafone.

Once you've manually registered on an iPhone to the non preferred network on a Vodafone account it does a pretty reasonable job of not leaving that network as long as its set to manual selection.

However in my laptop for the life of me I couldn't get the sim to register on anything but Vodafone but I feel that's drivers and windows 8.1 rather than the actual process

There are lists here : http://maps.mobileworldlive.com/netw...ited%20Kingdom if you click on roaming partners next to the network. Not sure how up to date it is though. It does have a full Vodafone UK 3g map as well which is reasonably shocking.

Spain


Vodafone Espa�S.A.U. (vodafone)

GSM 900/1800

Live


Vodafone Espa�S.A.U. (Vodafone Espana S.A.)

3G 2100

Live


Telef�a M�es Espa�.A. (Movistar)

GSM 900/1800

Live


Telef�a M�es Espa�.A. (Movistar)

3G 2100

Live


Orange Espagne, S.A., sociedad unipersonal (Orange)

GSM 900/1800

Live


Orange Espagne, S.A., sociedad unipersonal (Orange)

3G 2100

Live


Xfera M�es, S.A. (Yoigo)

3G 2100

Live


Xfera M�es, S.A. (Yoigo)

GSM 1800

Live

It says it has an agreement with every network in Spain - that much may be true but I certainly wasn't allowed on Yoigo or Orange.

I'm sure I read somewhere (probably these forums) that some UK networks will reject a request to connect to a non-preferred network initially, but then allow you to connect if your phone requests it a few times over. This idea being that if you really have no coverage on the preferred network it will connect to the 'fall back' network, but not otherwise. When in Japan I tried this with DoCoMo (Vodafone's preferred network seemed to be Softbank - presumably as they used to own that network - but the coverage kept dropping in and out I think as the phone switched between FDD and TDD networks [though I may have got that wrong] which annoyed me) and although the connection was rejected at first it would eventually let me on. So if you can't connect the first time it could be worth trying a few times.

Vodafone use a steered roaming platform to push customers towards the networks they want you to use. There are some nice articles online about how the steering works for those who want to have a read.

Essentially if the phone tries to connect to a 'non-preferred' network (that might the phone doing it by itself, or someone manually choosing the network) Voda don't authorise the connection straight away. They're hoping that by 'delaying' you'll have moved location meaning one of their preferred networks will be available again.

Voda do have an agreement with Orange ES - manually select the network and ignore the fact it says 'no service', wait 10mins and it'll finally connect.

When is Spain recently my 3 phone would stick like glue to the yoigo network what ever the service type, but I found 3g coverage limited, mainly edge, where I was stopping yoigo had no indoor coverage so would drop to orange 3g which was great or movistar 3g which didn't work most the time. When there again next month I will try and get it to stick on the orange network as it was much better, when manually searching Vodafone es was listed with the not allowed symbol next to it. When is Kos last year my 3 phone would only let me connect to 1 network (forget which) and if that wasn't available I had nothing.. Though had to watch out it dropping on to turkcell.. That would be an expensive mistake. Many people making calls around the pool got sucked in to that one as it was the strongest network due to the terrain 😲

I think Vodafone (by and large) when it comes to Roaming are untouchable with price plans and agreements world wide, someone correct me if Im wrong

Not saying muich about their home network but still

Anyway gonna go read up on steering