Hi Geoff
Yes, my Huawei phone is also dual SIM and I tried it as a dual network phone initially. It was easy to set up, cannot recall the procedure - it was over two years ago. However, I did not like having two networks on the same phone so I decided to put the backup SIM in my predecessor phone and use it independently when it was needed (Only for spotting purposes basically, and configured to work with Andy FMF text message spotting service or the excellent SOTA Spotter app for Android). The good thing about having the spare network PAYG SIM in another phone is if I smash my main (Voda) phone on the climb or it just goes kaput I can open up the EE one sitting in my rucksack and still have emergency comms if there is an accessible network.
I take two phones with me if I am going out on my own to do a SOTA activation. My main phone, an iPhone is on the 3 network and I can usually get a signal in the G/NPs and G/LDs using the SOTA Goat app although I regularly have to reboot phone when the app locks. As a back up I have an android phone on the Vodaphone network to cover any emergencies.
Wandering about in G/LD this week and my ‘3’ experience is somewhat poor for data on summits.
Also they reckoned I was on a ship at one point and wanted to charge me accordingly!!
(I was over on the west at the time.) Contract is up at the end of the month so watching this thread with interest!
On some LD summits the strongest signal on my mobile phone comes from the IOM and I receive a "“Welcome to the Isle of Man” message but mostly I have been happy with 3 for many years of activating in LD.
When I activate in the Alps I have had welcome messages from Switzerland and Austria with a couple of minutes of each other even though I’m still well into German territory - as you say it depends which cell your phone chooses to use. I used to turn off roaming to avoid high charges in these situations but now that all EU states are the same price, it’s not too important but have to watch for roaming charges from Switzerland (both Telekom(DE) and Vodafone(DE) charge roaming to CH on their prepaid cards).
By the way, regards an earlier comment on Dual-SIM phones (not Duelling Sims hopefully). Most recent Android 4G/5G phones can run 4G from both SIMs in fact there is an option in some phones to combine both channels to get more bandwidth. It used to be, as has been said, on 3G phones, that which network would run the 3G data had to be chosen and to switch over could take up to 30 seconds.
73 Ed.
It is a bit more complicated than that. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland but Isle of Man and Channel Islands are UK dependencies. None of the UK is in the EU but Northern Ireland is part of the single market.
Once covid is a distant memory (if it ever is) I wonder how many Brits queuing at European airports and being charged a fortune for mobile roaming will wonder what they were thinking in 2016.
A few years ago I was working for a small cellular base station manufacturer in Cambridge and we had a test cell VPN’d into a major network. One lunch time I heard some tenants of the next building chatting and one said “I keep getting this Welcome to Canada” message. I ran back into the lab and found someone had swapped coax cables and the base station was transmitting into an antenna instead of dummy load…
The Remainers like me were right, Brexit should have been stopped in November 2019 when the will of the British people (if they had had the will) could have stopped it. I was there on the big London March and others… We tried and failed…
Not wanting to change this into a discussion on BREXIT but just reporting that thanks to BREXIT, at the moment it’s not possible to buy books from the RSGB online shop for shipping into Europe:
73 Ed.
Books are zero-rated for VAT so I wonder what the problem is?
EDIT: Aha, books are charged at 7% VAT in Germany and now the transition has ended the RSGB needs to register for VAT in Germany, charge the 7% and do lots of jumping through hoops and produce lots of paperwork to ensure there is no friction introduced by the “frictionless trade deal” that Bunter signed us up to.
But we’ve got Blue passports so it’s all worth the pain.
If that’s the case it’ll be a nightmare for lots of companies as the VAT rate is different in different EU countries - and each country can for different goods, have different rates within a country.
By the way, I have a British (no mention of the EU on it anymore) red passport that I got when I renewed it a year ago - go figure (I am a full British Citizen).
OK, back to who has the most reliable mobile network in the UK, please …
… probably a phone with a SIM card from the EU - It can roam between the not spots. Oops - sorry back with the European Theme… The Blue passport does not seem to improve coverage…
Back to which network for reliability from summits.
After 13 years on Three, which I never thought was poor for coverage, I have been using EE since August. The main reason for switching was not better coverage but to get missing 4G services which could not be provided on my phone via Three (VoLTE and Wifi calling). There was nearly always a signal on a summit with Three but I did have a backup phone I used… a 120gm old Nokia 6120 Classic. This was on either O2 or Vodaphone for fill in when Three had no coverage. Normally I would see this was on a 2G connection.
Since switching I have always been able to get a good signal on a variety of G and GM summits and have not needed a backup phone. Only one summit needed me to carefully position where I left my phone so that it maintained a connection. Standing up got a connection back after a short delay, leaving it positioned correctly meant there was a signal whilst I was sat down operating.
Not needing a backup phone means I can save that weight to waste on some other toy of marginal use!
EE is more expensive than Three but for what I spend in money I save in weight carried. My phone is a 2018 Moto G6play working on bands 1,3,5,7,8,20,37. For really rural connectivity Band 20 (800MHz) is important. Any modern 4G phone for the EU markets should have the required frequency coverage.
I have a cheap repeating PAYG plan offering 500mins, unlimited texts and 5GB data with the previous month’s unused data rolling over for 1 month for £9/30 days. Typically at the start of a new period I have about 3.8GB unused rolled into the 5GB giving 8.8GB. Sadly the gift of Brexit keeps giving and from Jan 1st 2022 I have to pay £2/day or £10/month for EU roaming but can use all my mins/data etc.
For me, moving to EE once my last Three contract ended was a no-brainer to get the missing features and significantly better coverage.
