National Roaming

I live in Austria and am using Drei (3) as my carrier. They maintain two networks (I don’t know why) which are both considered Drei. Next to this I’m living close to the border with Switzerland (where 1MB of roaming data costs 5 Euro…).

On the FP1U I had my phone set to disallow roaming, but the phone recognized both Drei networks as “my” network automatically, so I was able to use the internet on both, without having roaming switched on. On the FP2 this seems to have changed. One of the Drei networks is now recognized as a roaming network and therefor switches off the data connection. Since I live close to the border I cannot switch on roaming, as this will cost me a lot of money sooner or later (probably sooner than later).

Is there a way to turn on “national roaming” on the FP2 (i.e. recognize both networks as my local network)? How would I go about doing this?

As a bonus question: on the FP1 it was possible to go to “Mobile Networks” in settings, click “Network Operators” and then “Search automatically”, to automatically find the right network. I used to do this a lot when I was connected to the Swiss network, to get back to the Drei network quickly. With the FP2 when I click “Network Operators” the phone first starts searching all the carriers and then allows me to choose automatically. This takes much, much more time… If someone has a fix or a solution for this that would be great!

Hi, I am using this patch for myself, it might work for you : https://forum.fairphone.com/t/patch-to-disable-same-country-roaming/11844

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I also noticed, that the network slection is a bit unintuitive. first of all it’s quite hard to reach and secondly it takes a long time to do something…
I crossed the border today travelling with my german sim card into austria and I noticed, that my FP2 did not automatically select any of the allowed austrian networks. So I selected it myself and I think I switched it back to automatic selection afterwards, which resulted in my phone getting disconnected from the network again. After a second try, manually connecting to another roaming network, it stayed on the A1 network but did not switch back to my home network once I returned home in the evening. This is a bit annoying in it’s current state I think, especially if you cross the border often or live next to it, as in wouterm’s case and I hope there will be a patch or a workaround in the foreseeable future :slight_smile:

Hej, I see this topic is at least one month old, but there is no solution yet.
I have only a data network if I enable the data roaming, because my FP2 doesn’t choose my network operator for national roaming without the general data roaming. Even if I try to choose it manually, it doesn’t work. The data in APN are correct.

I found the same problem with the FP1 (April 2015)

Hi!

I seem to have the same problem as the user wouterm. I guess about 90% of the time I’m in roaming mode. Yesterday I even got a new sim card because I thought there might be a problem with the sim itself. This seemed to work – but only until the end of the day. Today morning I was back in roaming. Which is very annoying because I’d prefer to having roaming turned off. Does anybody know if other providers have the same problems (such as hot, A1, etc…) or is only drei affected because they maintain two networks?

hi,

I have the same issue, with the German networks E-Plus and O2. On my previous phone I was able to turn on national roaming, which was a separate option to the “entire” roaming. anybody got any ideas on how to fix this issue?

Laura

oh. nevermind. I just found a link with an explanation on how to solve this. It’s done by downloading a module via the xposed framework.

On the Fairphone 2, national roaming to E-Plus will be automatically turned on for O2 cards, without any roaming warning.

Erm… Is it a problem that this program says, its not complicable with my FP2?

I live now in Liechtenstein, but have the swisscom network, as soon as i get to Liechtenstein it changes into roaming, although the swisscomnetwork would be availlable

Hi there,
I live in Vienna and have the same problem with the two DREI networks.
Did you get any solution yet?
Since I am often travelling, allowing roaming is not an option either :frowning2:

Was the support team able to help u?

Thanks in advance
Elena

I have a new fairphone 2. I use 2 local providers here in Austria one is BOB and the other is Ge.Org. Both SIms say that the are in roaming mode, even when I have selected the mobilenet manualy. What can I do ?

I too would like to know! Also using “bob” which is a subsection oft A1.

I used the Drei Kundenservice to turn off international roaming. This of course means, that when I’m abroad I need to find Wlan somewhere or not have internet. For the rest the solution has worked very well so far. I always have roaming on, the national roaming works, but I never incur costs for international roaming.

If everything works I was able to arrange that this issue is cleared at least with bob in the next update.

Hi @Subhash, what do you mean with “the next update”? The next update of what? :wink:

As far as I understand the matter there is a MVNO-list as part of the operating system. So I think the next update of the operating system is meant.

I installed the new update and still face this issue.

Yes, just loaded FPO 16.12.0 and still reads “roaming” when it is not.

I also tried the solution with the Xposed Framework, but it is not compatible with the FP 2 (see also post from Lobel.) As I live just on the border to germany I would be very happy to get a solution for this, it was resolved with the FP1 - now after switching to the FP2 the problem reoccurs.
Any input appreciated, cheers,

Dominik

I had a long discussion with FP-support team too.I had to send all Data of my provider (Bob) and got the promise, that the national roaming problem for BOB wil be fixed within the next updates.
When I complained, that nothing has changed after several updates, I got answer from some new support-lady who obviously never had heard of this problem, and gave the advice to talk to my provider???
Maybe it is helpfull If everybody who has this problem too, starts to contact the support team again, saying that a solution has been announced half a year ago.