If you've joined us or had a new SIM after December 2017, and run into trouble getting your roaming to work in the Channel Islands or Isle of Man don’t worry. This happens from time to time and it’s easy to fix. Just check the Roaming Costs page for the country you’re in to get up and running. If you still have problems, follow the steps below for more help.
You can check that you’re all set up to use your phone abroad by simply logging into Your Account or calling +44 7458 333 789.
It’s also a good idea to check that there’s network coverage where you are. See Roaming Costs to check the coverage in the country you’re visiting.
You can also try turning the phone off and then back on again. Sounds simple, but it'll refresh the network signal on your phone and, more often than not, it does the trick. If that doesn't work, you can try a manual network search. Here's how:
- Go into Settings on your phone
- Now go to Phone Settings
- Then choose Network Selection
- Select Manual network selection instead of Automatic and let the phone search for available networks. This might take up to a minute
- Now you should have a list of networks you can use
If your phone has a removable battery and you are still stuck, try what we call a hard reboot. Just remove the battery from your phone without turning it off first, then wait about 20 minutes before putting it back in and switching the phone on.
This reboots your phone and it normally does the trick.
If that also doesn’t work, you may need to update a SIM setting on your phone before trying the network search again. Here’s how you do that:
Android
- Select Apps from the Home screen or swipe to access
- Select the Virgin SIM toolkit option. Depending on the SIM slot the SIM is in this may be ‘Virgin’ or ‘Virgin2’
- Select Roaming
- Select Select Mode
- Select Manual
- Select International
iPhone or iPad with a Physical SIM
- Select Settings from the Home Screen
- Select Mobile Data
- Select SIM Applications
- Select Roaming
- Select Select Mode
- Select Manual
- Select International
iPhone or iPad with an eSIM
- Select Settings from the Home Screen
- Select Mobile Data
- Select the Virgin data plan
- Select SIM Applications
- Select Roaming
- Select Select Mode
- Select Manual
Once you return to the UK you’ll need to follow the steps above again but make sure you’ve set the both the Network and SIM Modes back to Automatic, otherwise your device may not reconnect to our network in the UK.
