I am told, it looks more like Black than Blue. Not produced or printed in the UK. PRINTED IN THE EU! Would you believe it…
My EHIC card is still valid for some considerable time. At least the Brexit truth twisters were able to secure a deal on that!
73 Phil
Ditto in Germany - all 3G cell support will be gone by the end of the year.
Here’s something really weird I’ve found …
Until the end of January 2021 - no extra roaming charges EU-UK, but now new rates apply but look in the chart below - Deutsch Telekom (T-Mobile) believe the Isle of Man, Guernsey/Jersey and Northern Ireland have stayed in the EU - as far as roaming charges are concerned - WHAT? Admittedly this chart is for Germans travelling abroad, not the other way around but I wonder why certain parts of GB are listed and classified separately?
I’ve renewed my passport about a year ago (Full British Citizen still) - the European text is removed but it’s still the same red colour as before. Is it just Scotland that will change to blue passports? My original passport from years and years ago, was black.
73 Ed.
They’re all Blue now Ed. The UK Passport office is not a devolved institution AFAIK.
Apparently £8.6million was wasted when existing Red EU passports stopped being issued as the blank existing passports were destroyed rather than have them used up.
So mine is somewhat of a collectors item then - a red (maroon - whatever) non-EU passport.
EU on the left, non-EU on the right, red passports.
Typical what happens when politicians get involved rather than use up what you have got they waste them - the same is happening here I suspect with vaccines - rather than admit they over ordered and give them to some third world countries, they’re keeping the doses until they expire hoping to get someone in Germany to use them up!
CRAZY!
OK, this is now getting too far off-topic - sorry all.
In SP.
Ed
The Channel Islands and the IOM weren’t part of the EU so they probably already had separate reciprocal agreements with Deutsch Telekom whilst Northern Ireland are still part of the European single market.
Nick
Hi Nick,
I hadn’t realised that - thanks for the clarification.
It did seem strange, seeing those listed in one list and Great Britain listed in the other list (along with Australia and the US) though.
73 Ed.
UPDATE: IOM and the Channel Islands are part of the European Economic Area (EEA) and through that they are signed up to the no additional roaming charges deal with the EU countries.
I know that people on the IOM didn’t get a vote in the EU referendum because the IOM is a crown dependency and not part of the UK but I am not sure about Gibraltar residents as I think I recall that they did get a vote.
To make matters more confusing the old IOM passport is shown below:
This extract was taken from Wiki:
Unusually, therefore, the words European Union and Isle of Man appeared together on Isle of Man British citizen passports, even though the territory of the Isle of Man was not part of the European Union. This is because the bearer was perhaps a full British and European Union citizen, although an endorsement may have applied in the case of some citizens.
Tried them all, have now found EE to be the best for SOTA using SOTA Spotter with Internet connection has not failed yet.
None of those are part of GB and never have been.
You can check the coverage maps on each of the providers’ websites for the areas you are interested in. Not super accurate, but it’s a start.
It also seems to depend a lot on what phone you have. DH and I are both on EE, which is the only network with any coverage where we live in Mid-Wales, but DH’s older iPhone (one of those smaller ones) is much more likely to get signal than my newer Motorola.
Hm … the coverage maps are a guesstimate at best and assume every cell tower is actually working
I am with Plusnet (carried over the EE network) and had no problems so far
We’ll see how it goes as I get further afield into the wilds
Rgds
Rick
Awesome, thanks.
Based upon the experiences of others on this forum & (as others have pointed out) EE will be carrying the emergency services communications in the not too distant future, it’s sounding like EE might be the best option if I do decide to change my provider.
But BT/EE is not necessarily a good choice, has already been said, that if you take your phone into mainland EU BT/EE have taken a corporate decision to charge you for roaming. Vodafone - not yet - but time will tell if they follow suit.
As others have said you are probably best carrying two networks, either in a dual SIM phone or by having a back up PAYG deal (I use 1p mobile on EE) on your old phone, for when your main network has no coverage. I find that works for me most of the time. In southern Snowdonia recently I found there was no coverage on either network.
73 Phil
Hi Phil, I have a duel sim phone, wondering how do you set it up. Do you get a sim from another provider, what?
Any advice will be welcome,
73 de Geoff vk3sq
Yes, get a SIM from another provider and insert into the next slot. The rest depends on the phone but the last dual SIM phone I had let you specify which SIM was the data SIM. It didn’t have dual receivers/modems so the SIM used for DATA would try for 4g and the other SIM would be voice/SMS only on a different band to the first SIM. i.e. one SIM would be (in the UK) on 2100MHz and the other may be on 900MHz or 1800MHz. Both would handle voice/SMS reception and you could specify which to use for voice/SMS sending. But data was always from the SIM you had specified. You could swap the roles over but not when making calls/data obviously.
