Tip for Three users roaming in France

[Canalsman]

I like to listen to the BBC using my phone whilst roaming in France.

I use the TuneIn app and select the lowest bit-rate stream to save data.

This works fairly well but on occasion the stream fails, sometimes repeatedly, which I find really annoying.

I've tried all sorts of setting changes and different roaming partners to improve things.

A couple of days ago I changed my Android phone setting to force a 3G connection. The setting can be found under More Networks, Mobile Networks, Network Mode.

Three only offers 3G roaming so this has no downside.

This change has transformed the connection reliability. It would seem that leaving the Network Mode to automatically determine the connection type doesn't work well when roaming on Three.

This may be a useful change to make in other countries where only 3G roaming is available.

 

[Canalsman]

Just found this explanation that may shed some light:

The worst things that could ruin a perfect day is when you’re forced to wait for a favorite online content to load. While you wait for downloading the media file, your Android phone may switch to different data modes to bring the content on your screen. This network type switching eventually slows down the speed and caused more waiting time.

When you talk about Network Type Setting on Android, by default, the Android settings only allow the option to have 4G/3G speed as the preference. This may cause your Android phone network to switch between 4G, 3G, and 2G whenever there is even a slight reduction in network coverage. This may be one of the reasons for slowing down the download and upload speed on your Android phone. This Network Type Auto Selection results in slower browsing speed and the web pages may take longer to load.

 

[WildThingsKev]

I've often done this on my mifi, in fact I did it today. 3 tends to default to Bougyes but I arrived in Combloux this afternoon and the 3g was painfully slow so I searched networks available on the manual setting and selected Free which is much faster.

Manually selecting a network is no use when driving of course.

 

[Canalsman]

I agree that choosing a different network can make a difference but that is not the point I was making.

May I suggest you try my method and see if this is a better option ...

 

[ScoTTyBEEE]

In rural areas I’ve found 3G to be faster than 4G at times. Ie the difference between enjoying Netflix in the evening or not.

 

[WildThingsKev]

OK, so on my mobile I had the option to select WCDMA only, which seems to be 3g only, as you suggest.
Within my mifi the only option is to untick the support LTE networks (lte = 4g).

Thanks, will look for improvement.

 

[Canalsman]

After a number of days use this change has transformed the reliability of my connection ...