Manual selection of European roaming network

[kgraham]

Can anyone confirm whether Vodafone are blocking manual selection of roaming networks in Europe apart from local Vodafone networks.
I recently visited Greece and because Vodafone GR was so poor the iphone handset started logging into Vodafone Albania which was actually quite close.
I was extremely angry about this since Vodafone Albania is in a different roaming zone which isn't part of my European inclusive plan.
This then involved further issues with Vodafone to claim a refund.
I tried several times to manually select alternative Greek networks e.g Cosmote which had good coverage but the iphone wouldn't connect.
No error messages were ever issued.
Following a lengthy discussion with Vodafone Technical support ( who assured me this should work and I should be able to select any Greek network ) the problem was still unresolved.
Furthermore I foolishly agreed to reset my network settings as part of this process which did absolutely nothing apart from delete wifi codes and other network settings and essentially just make things worse.

[jeffkinn]

I certainly didn't have a problem manually selecting networks when I was in Italy a few weeks ago. But you can't select a network if Vodafone doesn't have a roaming agreement with that network. 

[steffangl]

If there is a roaming agreement, then yes you can.  But it requires a bit of trickery.  Vodafone use a steered roaming platform which favours their preferred partners (in Europe heavily to the local VF networks). 

Without waffling on too much - essentially when your phone tries to connect to a network an authentication request is sent back to VF who can allow/reject/ignore it.  In Greece, when you try and use Voda GR it is always allowed (if roaming switched on, no bars etc), and you connect. 

If you try and use Cosmote the request initially gets ignored, and after waiting a while, the phone will move on and try another network.  By this time, they hope VF GR is available again and it will use that.

However, after 2 or 3 consecutive requests in a row to the non-preferred network, it will eventually connect.  So, if you're somewhere with just Cosmote signal, after 10 or so mins the phone will have tried to authenticate a few times, and it will get an allow reply.  Similarly, if you wait ages with 'No service' after manually selecting Cosmote, it will connect.

You can trick the system to speed things up by repeating the connection requests:  When the list of networks loads, choose Cosmote and wait 20 secs or so, then quickly click any of the other networks but instantly choose Cosmote again and wait another 20secs, repeat a few times.  (Easy on iPhone, not so much on Android).

VF will have different priorities set for different networks, so some will connect straight away, some after 2 attempts, some after 3, depending on the order they want the phone to use them.  When I was last there Wind was above Cosmote, but will change depending on their wholesale costs and roaming load, and each country is different.

Bit of a ramble, sorry!

[kgraham]

Many thanks for the reply.

Your findings are very interesting and guess if I'd left the manual setting to Cosmote  for longer it might have eventually connected then stayed on that until it was out of signal.

It's just astonishing Vodafone tech support don't seem to know anything about this and indeed went on to mess my iphone up with unnecessary settings changes. They assured me it would roam onto any available network which was clearly not true.

The really annoying thing was roaming onto Vodafone Albania which I obviously knew was outside the normal European band which then triggered a £6 daily charge despite the fact I switched data roaming off as soon as I got the text advising me that it had happened.

I've had similar issues in Spain where in areas of poor Vodafone ES I've tried to lock on to alternative carriers but on every occasion it's failed .

So, will try this again sometime and see what happens. In the meantime does anyone know where to get a list of approved carriers vodafone have agreements with listed by European country. Without that it's rather pot luck.

[mark2410]

i was having just the same problem but in poland, but for me when they reset the network settings it killed my ability to logon to any 4g network, it just kept booting me back to 2g which made the connection for data essentially useless.