No Service in Angola

[Craig7000]

Hello. I’ve arrived in Angola and my O2 pay monthly SIM can’t connect to a network.

I travelled through France to get here and the phone worked fine there.

I’m using and iPhone 11 Pro.

The O2 Guru’s say my account is setup correctly and should work.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Craig

[pgn]

 @Craig7000: 2 mobile operators cover Angola, and they operate different frequencies, Unitel and Movicel - assuming you have restarted the phone, which worked in France en-route, since landing in Angola, to force it to search for available networks?

Also I guess you have the iPhone data configured correctly, as O2 confirmed, correct apn etc?

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Mobile),C...

[Craig7000]

Hello.

I’m using an iPhone 11 Pro.

I’ve tried restarting the phone, resetting network settings, reseating the sim and manual network selection.

I can see Movicel and Unitel as options but I can’t connect to them.

O2 said the APN settings should work but I’ve seen posts on here saying they need to be changed. But they seem to be older posts.

Craig

[MI5]

The apn is related to data only, so if you were working ok in France, it's not that.

It can only be an issue with the local network. Maybe they are blocking roaming connections?

[madasaf1sh]

@Craig7000

Change the network settings to 2G/3G on the iPhone as I don't think there are any 4G agreements in Angola, and the iPhone will try and connect to 4G.

[Craig7000]

I tried both providers using the 3G option and neither of them work.

O2 are telling me that they have agreements in place with both Movicel and Unitel.

My colleagues are on Vodafone and 3 and their phones are working with a different provider.

O2 told me there’s no blocks on my account too.

[madasaf1sh]

@Craig7000

If it was working in France, then roaming is fine, and working.

This may seem like grasping at straws but i have known this to happen, and have had it in Japan and Malta, and that is check your date and time on the handset.

[Craig7000]

Yeah it works in Europe fine.

The time in Angola is the same as the UK at the moment.

[pgn]

The timezone auto-set function used to play havoc with some Spain and Malta networks for me, I ended up switching to manual TZ control. The 2G/3G thing has caught me out too. Manually searching for mobile service providers and selecting each in turn sometimes helped, and turning off auto-select, sometimes helped. Cannot think of anything else, @Craig7000 - except perhaps to pop into a local mobile shop when you get a chance and ask for help.

[Craig7000]

I now have signal after 8 days of being in Angola.

Must have been a problem with the provider over here because I haven’t changed anything on my phone.

I did tweet at Movicel saying I was with O2 and couldn’t connect so maybe they’ve fixed something their end.