Iphone not working abroad. APN issue?

[Lisamj]

HI all,

I've been a pay monthly customer of O2 for over 20 years and never had any international roaming issues. I've just returned from Italy where my phone didn't work. As soon as I landed and switched on, a pop up said 'O2 have blocked 4G called from this device' and for the entire trip I had no service : no calls, text or data access (unless I hooked onto to my husbands phone or used the apartment wifi). This was my first trip abroad with this iphone, but when trying my sim in my husbands phone it had the same problem (so not a device issue). His phone was working fine and he is also with O2.

Called support and they told me to do a network reset and manually tried selecting numerous networks without luck. Another call and they said they were adding an apple support bolt on - that didn't work. They escalated it to the fault team who only got back to me once I'd returned and said they can't help unless I'm abroad as the account looks ok - catch 22!  I'm due to go on my own to Spain on business soon as cannot risk the same thing happening as I'll have no-one else to hook onto, so don't have much choice be to look at leaving O2 if I can't resolve this.

I asked the faults team about changing the APN to mobile from idata as I've seen people mention on here, and she said I shouldn't do that as iphones have to have idata selected?!

Has anyone had a similar experience and a sure-fire fix? Anyone know why I shouldn't select mobile instead of idata with an iphone?  At the end of my tether and getting nowhere with O2 support.

Thanks in hope of help!

Lisa

[Lisamj]

Hi

Yes visual voicemail works fine here. never had any issues with that. Both O2 customer service team and their specialist fault team say there is nothing wrong that they can see. 

I did wonder what this 'Apple Support Bolt On' that they said they were sending whilst I was in Italy was. It didn't work, but I wonder if it didn't work because my phone wasn't operating in Italy. 

[MI5]

@Lisamj 

The "apple support bolt on" I assume is iData which you already have if visual voicemail is working.

There are 2 levels of roaming bars that can be applied so I wonder if customer services have removed both of them, or just the first level?

I think it's a good idea to call in @O2Lisa to check for you.

[O2Lisa]

Thanks for the tag @MI5 😊

@Lisamj I'll message you privately and look in to this for you. 

[Lisamj]

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the private message earlier this week. Not sure how long your sound work takes but wondered if there was any update? If I'm premature in following up do let me know!

Thanks