How to avoid roaming in Albania when in Corfu?

[Colin_Thames]

I'm heading to Corfu next year (I realise this enquiry is early!) and the whole family is on O2.  However, we've only recently moved from EE and this issue is on my mind.  Last time we found we kept connecting to Albanian 3g - the coast is ony a couple of miles away at our Corfu resort - and the roaming costs were a real shock.  I avoided this after a few days by connecting manually to the EE partner in Corfu but in the meantime had run up quite a bill for a few incoming calls.

So my questions are:

1. what roaming partners do O2 use in Corfu, so we can connect manually and avoid huge roaming costs?  

2. what's the best way of setting this up beforehand so we don't end up being charged the daily O2 Travel rate for Albania (£4.99 a day) rather than Europe (£1.99 a day) just by connecting to Albanian data, even for a few kilobytes?

We've all got iPhones.

Thanks

[MI5]

You need to set the network selection mode to manual and make sure it's a Greek network you are connected to.

CosmOTE or Telestet

[adamtemp64]

For iphones settings > Carrier > Automatic off > then select the corfu network 

[Colin_Thames]

Thanks guys, I'll make sure to connect to only Cosmote or Telestet as soon as I land.
I guess I also need to remember to turn off data roaming beforehand so the phone doesn't connect even briefly to an Albanian network, then once I'm manually connected to a Greek network I can turn on data roaming if I need it, to only be charged £1.99 a day.

On another note, I see that the O2 Travel page is much clearer about how it works. I particularly like the fact that incoming calls up to 120 mins per day don't trigger the charge - it's only outgoing texts or calls or any data that start the clock running. So if I only wanted to receive calls I wouldn't incur any charge at all , so long as I don't text or call and leave data switched off. That's a big benefit in the US when incoming calls on other networks can cost 90p a minute! I hope I am interpreting that right? It seems pretty clear, but I can get the wrong end of the stick sometimes.

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

Yes, you've got it right.
You can also call within the country you are visiting with the travel allowance.