Connecting to Orange.fr network in France

[Anonymous]

Travelling in France. Can only connect to Bouygues. SIM will not connect to Orange-FR.

Staying in a low coverage area. Cannot see SFR, cannot see Bouygues. can only see Orange-FR (3g) but phone won't allow me to connect "no network access".

Friends have visited - they're on o2 and can't connect either. GiffGaff (o2 network) user can't connect. However a VodafoneUK friend can connect or Orange-FR in this location.

So the problem is not my phone, nor with ORANGE-FR but with o2. How can I resolve this without asking for a PAC and moving to Vodafone. And NO i don't want a local SIM.

[adamtemp64]

I flagged this issue to o2 uesterday on twitter if you have acces to that please also contact them on twitter

[adamtemp64]

Just had this message on twitter from o2

We just got an update explaining the roaming issue with Orange FR should be resolved - customers may need to manually select the network

[Anonymous]

I wonder if/when it will be resolved!  I am not sanguine 😞  Yesterday I finished a lengthy Twitter exchange with O2 on this problem - the replies were frustrating to say the least and suggested a lack of understanding of my Tweets, no sensible solutions were offered and no suggestion of any resolution.  I have just tried yet again to connect manually to either Orange or SFR, both of which provide a strong signal here, but yet again my O2 phone refuses to connect.  It will connect successfully only with Bouygues, but there is no Bouygues coverage here.  To use the phone I have to drive two or three miles to where there is a Bouygues signal.  Last year and the year before, with the same phones, same SIMs, at the same place there was no difficulty connecting to Orange or SFR.

[RueDrBouree]

Hi

Maybe not related but at my house in Burgundy I get a strong signal with Orange. Unfortunately recently my O2 sim seams to connect to Orange fr but the iPhone shows just one bar of signal. My partner is with EE and has an S3, that phone gets full signal from Orange in the same part of the house.

However if I switch data roaming on then I get a usablesignal from Orange fr and text start to be delivered. 

Alex

[Anonymous]

well i've been in france for 3 months now, travelled around extensively and have never successfully connected to anything but Bouygues and that has patchy coverage in france. Manually connecting to SFR and to OrangeFR never works, and the network refuses access, even with full signal in the centre of a large city.

my bet is SFR and and Orange (which is owned by France telecom) do not want to extend any sort of credit agreement with Telefonica (that own O2). telefonica management simply havnt told their staff, their support teams and least of all their customers. 

bascially it's all eyes on 4G. the next cash cow and screw your long term customers. o2 arent making any money which is why i keep getting texts offering discount on hardware.