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Roaming Speeds Throttled

Ponty79
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I took out an o2 contract with the o2 Travel Inclusive feature giving me use of my phone in the USA, Canada etc.  I understand the limit of 1220 mins and texts per day but I think it unfair that you throttle the speeds when roaming abroad.  Three and Vodafone do not appear to do this.  You have to scour the T&C's to even seen any mention of this.  What are o2 doing about lifting the speed restrictions when abroad.  It's painfully slow.

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madasaf1sh
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@Ponty79

Every network has issues with Data Speeds in the US, i have roamed on all 4 networks whilst in in various states from Hawaii, via Nevada and many others Florida.

 

The speeds i got on Ohau in Hawai'i where quicker than in New York or Los Angeles... 

 

Never had any Issues in Toronto

The only reason i can think of is that the US networks prioritise their own customers above roaming customers. I nearly once got our US Network partner to admit this..

What networks are you roaming on, and what countries?

- Xperia 1V - o2 and Spusu
- Pixel 8 Pro - o2 and Vodafone UK
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Bambino
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@Ponty79 O2 will do nothing about lifting restrictions on roaming speeds. Your best option is to get a local PAYG sim from AT&T or T-Mobile If you want to use data on your phone in the US.

I DO NOT WORK FOR O2



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BTN_EPS
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Just to add to the above, things haven't changed! 😠 Have just got back from roaming in Canada and whilst there was on all 3 main networks (Bell, Telus & Rogers) and my speeds were SEVERELY throttled to 0.5 Mbps. This made even doing basic things like using Apple Maps/Google Maps painfully slow when needed. 

My partner, on the other hand who's with Vodafone UK, was roaming onto Rogers (as I did also at times) and had no speed restrictions whatsoever!! 

Am pretty aghast that O2 deems this acceptable in 2021, when they try and market themselves as a premium service in the UK. Not paying foreign networks for an acceptable amount of bandwidth comes across as miserly and is not a good look. 

So to agree with the original post, I also took out my Sim Only contract with O2 Travel included and feel somewhat cheated by the experience! As such want to provide feedback to anyone else who might be thinking of taking out a contract on the same basis, as you will be disappointed. 😔

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Jeronimo
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Fast forward to April 2022, I'm currently roaming in various cities across México. Regardless which network I'm connected to the max speed is always below 1 Mbps both up and down. You can barely send messages via app, but can't do anything else much as quickly as you wish for. Even a basic web page takes forever to load up, let alone streaming YouTube or uploading photos on social media apps. 

Similarly I also have EE and Vodafone contract numbers on this trip, and both of them often exceeds 50 Mbps up & down in the same locations I took the test on O2. The throttle makes O2's inclusive zone product a gimmick. It's quantity, not quality they are selling.

Ironically O2 has still been subsidiary of Movistar. Despite I connected to their sister company's network it's still this bad. Not sure if the merger with Virgin media will bring any brighter future ahead. Otherwise, I'm better off shopping around at the end of contract and disregard this underwhelming perk from O2.

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