Roaming not working in EU

[debs313]

Having come over from the UK to Malta in the EU my phone has not picked up signal.

In settings I have mobile data and roaming turned on whilst the network is automatically searching. I am unable to connect to the network however. Switching off from automatically searching allows the phone to manually find several Maltese networks but these are all "Forbidden" e.g. Melita Mobile 3G (Forbidden). I have been in the country for 4 days and my phone still has not connected despite restarts, power cycles and removal of sim card. Please help!!!

[Kath_F]

Hi debs313, 

Thanks for your post and welcome to the forums. It's great having you on board with us in the Community. 

I'm sorry to hear you're having an issue whilst in Malta. 

Please have a look here. 

You can see how to ensure your settings are correct as well as some helpful steps on how to fix some issues. 

Pop back here and let us know how you get on. 

Thanks, 

[debs313]

Hi Cath,

Thank you but as outlined in my initial post I have been through this page and done exactly as said to no avail.
Any further help would be much appreciated as these fixes did not work.

Many thanks.

[Kath_F]

Hi debs313, 

Thanks for coming back to me on this. 

I'm sorry to hear that the link was unable to resolve things. 

I'd like to take a closer look at your account to see what's going on. I have sent you a private message regarding this and will investigate further once I receive your reply. Just click on the little plum envelope at the top right-hand side of the page to access your inbox.

Thanks, 

[Kath_F]

Hi debs313,

Thanks for coming back to me via private message with your information.

I've taken a look at your account and all is fine from our network perspective. The roaming is fully active and there is no issues that we can see. 

In terms of the forbidden message you are seeing, these will be the networks where we don't have a roaming agreement with. I'm wondering if the ones we do have an agreement with, the mobile phone itself cannot see them. 

I can see that someone spoke to our teams yesterday and they did try turning the roaming off and back on so it's worth giving the phone another reboot just to see if this helps things. 

If not, try once again to do a manual selectin. You may need to try a few networks in order to find one that works. 

Finally, as a last resort, if possible, try your SIM in another handset to see if it connects. 

Keep us posted with how you get on. 

Thanks, 

[debs313]

Hi Kath,

With several different options tried to no avail the final resort was putting the SIM into my son's phone.
This allowed me to access an option called "SIM toolkit" where I was able to change the SIM to international roaming. From then it was a case of searching for the networks available and connecting. I then moved the SIM back to my phone and it was able to connect.

Overall it appears to all be sorted now which is fantastic. However, what if I didn't have a spare phone handy to put the SIM into and change the settings?! Seems like quite a huge oversight!!!

Thank you for your help,
Debs

[Sandy1968]

I am having same problem. No network in Malta. I have been to other EU countries recently and phone worked fine. I don’t have the tool to take my SIM card out and don’t want to put it into someone else’s  phone as suggested on this thread. Please sort this out Virgin media. 

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @Sandy1968,

Welcome to our Community Forums! Thank you for your first post and I'm sorry to hear that you're impacted by a similar issue to the original poster. 

Have you taken a look at our Malta Roaming page to see if all your settings are correct? Can you please tell me what mobile phone you're using? Is it an iPhone or an Android? 

Please let me know so we can assist furher.

Thank you.

[Sandy1968]

IPhone 13 pro

[Sandy1968]

My settings are all ok, international barring is off and the other setting is on.