Choose provider manually

Hello everyone,

I have the same problem ! I am leaving at the border with Switzerland both of my sims are set on manual so they are supposed to always keep their own network. However, my French sim always switches to the Swiss network if I am in an area without French network for a while. It’s started to be really tiring and expensive when I don’t notice that the network has switched and I answer a call …

Did anyone succeed to solve this problem ?

Not sure if this is the behaviour you want, and whether you have the option (could be provider dependent), but have you tried the following setting?:
Phone app > menu key > Settings > Voice Call > Call barring > [your SIM] > Incoming calls while roaming.

Hey !

Thanks for the answer.
What you suggest won’t have the same effect, it will only block the incoming call if my mobile switches network but what I would like is not to switch network.

What I want is this :

  • French sim staying on French network or nor taking any network if the French one is not available,
  • Same behavior for the Swiss sim but with Swiss network.

Normally this behavior is set by choosing manually the network in “Mobile network settings > Network operators”. It was at least the case with all my previous phones and my friends here are setting the same on others smartphones brands and it’s working. I guess there is a breach in the Fairphone settings.

Thanks to come back to this issue I described an year ago and seems still not to be fixed. At the moment I can’ test because I am presently not in a border region. But as mentioned at the beginning: Under “manually” I still understand, that FP1 shouldn’t switch to an other provider without an “ok” form the user.

You’re welcome :slight_smile: I hope that someone will come with a solution or that the breach will be fix in the next Fairphone update.

@tin@Marion: Have you set PLMNs?

@Stefan : Thanks for this solution.
Does that mean that if my French network is not available at all, it will select a Swiss one ? If yes, will it go back to the French one as soon as it’s available again ?

Yeah, I think, if the French network is not available at all, the phone eventually switches to the Swiss one. You could of course try to the delete the Swiss PLMNs (in my case that would be for example “Swisscom” and possibly other too). Maybe this would prevent the phone from choosing a Swiss network.

No, I don’t want that FP1 does it “automatically”- I want to see - as it is in other mobiles - a window where I am asked to choose a network.

I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. Actually I don’t even live near a border, so I also cannot perform any testing. You could try to contact Fairphone support again (I think you have done so already once) and see if they gathered new information about your issue.

So it’s not really fixing my issue because I would like my phone to be on my French network or on nothing. I know that the manual network setting is supposed to work this way, at least this is the case with other cellphones’ brands.

So what “manually” then means?

I’ll ask Fairphone support personally, if they can tell me something about this!

Just yesterday. I was near the border to Italy - and FP1 connected to a Italian provider without any message. I only noticed it because I got an SMS form the provider telling me the roaming rates. “Manually” is something else.

@Techaddict suggested that the setting usually is stored on the SIM card, and if this doesn’t work, he said you should try and turn the phone off and on various times. Maybe the SIM card remembers then.

I don’t really understand. When phone is switching automatically to a foreign provider then i have to switch it off? But FP1 has 2 SIM cards.So if one of them is switching then you can’t use the other one. Makes not really sense for me.

No, @Techaddict suggests that the phone does not remember your choice until some reboots. If you have two SIMs, you have to choose the network for each of them individually.

To be honest, I don’t really believe that this is just a matter of rebooting. My last guess would be to go to Engineer Mode and tweek the network related setting. However you would do this on your own responsibility and In cannot lead you on. Maybe they can help you at some Mediate related forum.

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IMO this whole thread is not about a Fairphone bug but about an Android 5 bug. I think I did not have it on my former Android 4 phone.

  1. phone network selection always behaves as automatic, therefore it is impossible to stick to chosen network when chosen network weakens; Phone will automatically switch to a stronger signal thus leading to roaming
  2. PLMN management does not work : impossible to save a new PLMN and equally impossible to erase an existing PLMN.
    The problem should be addressed by Google for all Android 5 phones.
    I have not been able to find a solution yet.

Hi, @Arnaud, welcome to the forum! :slight_smile: You might want to introduce yourself here.

This whole thread is about the FP1 (which has Android 4.2.2) and not the FP2 (Android 5.1). So this is not an Android 5 bug. Besides I’ve been able to create a new PLMN.