In case anyone else is thinking of switching.......

We spend a fair bit of time in France, so a few weeks ago I took the plunge & switched my family across to 3 - we were with Tesco on the o2 network.

I switched to 3 as they waive roaming charges in a number of countries including France.

Experience so far has been mixed

What they don't tell you is that it's only with certain partners that it's free - fortunately that includes Orange France who have a good signal by our place.

Tethering is also disabled when roaming - which screwed up my plans of 'working from home' on a laptop in the middle of a lake (on a boat)

You need to be back in the UK at least once a month - or they 'reserve the right' to charge you - will wait & see how that works out - my wife is the only one who spends 2 months there - and she's by far the lowest user of the 4 of us.

I had an intermittent signal at home - so they sent me a box that connects to the WiFi - free of charge & delivered next day I now get full strength signal all around the house

Local coverage is still a bit weak - noticeably worse than o2 - my wife is still complaining about that one.

I'm on 'all you can eat' data - but there is a tethering limit in the UK to 4Gb/month - I don't expect that to be a problem, but I didn't realise up front.

On balance, I think it was a good move - but only as we spend a lot of time abroad & it's nice not to think about it & just use your phone & data

interesting info,thanks..  ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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Don't know if this is of any use to you, but I've just finished working in France (Paris) on a long term contract (if anyone has an opening for a 3d CAD specialist let me know!), and while there I used OpenVPN which gave me a UK IP address while in France, it's about $25 a year and gives full access to all UK TV channels. Another site is AceVPN

Thanks - will take a look - my internet connection is not the best, but OK for downloading (just not streaming)

EE also do something similar on the 4GEE Extra plans - basically you inclusive minutes and texts allowance is extanded throughout Europe while you are away from the UK. This includes calls back to the UK and calls from one country to another eg France to Germany while you are in France. It doesn't include calls that you originate in the UK to Europe though so not so good if you regularly have to call friends/relatives etc in Europe from the UK. My brother in law has one of thd call plans with unlimited calls and texts (around £45 pcm) and for the last six months that he has been in Poland he hasn't had to pay extra over his std monthly charge. This plan however doesn't include roaming data but as he is mainly in a wifi zone its not a big issue.

Alistair - just a thought regarding your data issue and tethering can't yiu get a local French network sim and put it in an old phone and tether through that ? Then you can have your 3 phone and laptop both running off "low cost" data. Not sure what the networks are like in France but I use this system sucessfully. 2008 TDV8

Thanks - plan B is a local SIM for tethering my laptop.

On the charges - I'm paying £17 / month with 3 for all you can eat data & texts plus 200 mins talk time (SIM only) and that includes using the phone in some other countries - doesn't include Poland, but does cover France & the US wish is where I tend to go

Yes we had 3 on both our mobiles and over the years it's been great. However I recently moved to Vodaphone and they now just cap their costs at £6 a day for everything, so it does cost a bit movers but I found dats coverage in both Turkey and France to be better, unsure why as I think we were using the same suppliers but my IPhone 6+ didnt lose signal or data on either holiday.

£6 is OK for the occasional day I suppose, but I manage over 40 days, my wife is probably nearer 100 and the kids somewhere in between.....

With the tethering you can kind of get around it..

I use a VPN on my phone to my home network and then tether to my laptop. Then form the VPN on the laptop so the traffic from both is hitting the same endpoint and isn't like normal tethered traffic. Works on all networks so all good 😄

Other option would be a USB dongle and run the laptop off that 😉

My main reason to move to three was Giffgaff are increasing tariff prices like clockwork and they charge for 4g ontop as well as no tethering at all and disable the option on some phones 😁

Typical that after I move it looks like the company that owns them has now bought O2 so will merge their networks and probably their tariffs in a few years so back to square one  FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.

Sounds promising

I've never used a VPN before - What do you use on your home network ? Looks like the iPhone has a setting for it

By USB dongle - do you mean that if I use a USB connection to the phone, it doesn't detect it's a tethered connection ?

For the VPN I have it set as a service on my synology that sits at home

For the USB dongle it would be one of those that you can get from a 3 shop or the like. They are generally quite cheap from eBay now and not as good as a mifi device but better when abroad for this kind of use

The idea is that the phone creates a connection to your home in the UK. When you tether to your laptop you form a VPN link on that as well so both devices are then connecting to your UK home and hats all that the network can see  FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.

Thanks - I've got a Synology DS413j

VPN here we come

Good lad! There's plenty of videos on YouTube on how to set it up.

If you don't have a static ip the best way is to use a dynamic DNS provider, can't recall who mine is with but it's free and works a treat  FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.