Customers Report Problems with Vodafone’s Roaming Service
Some customers of mobile network operator Vodafone UK, specifically those who are currently abroad in a variety of countries and using the operator’s roaming services, have for the past few hours been complaining about connectivity problems (e.g. they’re unable to make any calls and find that mobile broadband / data isn’t working).
Diagnosing problems with roaming can be very difficult, not least because they’re usually more likely to be caused by the remote network operator, rather than your home operator. Despite this, there’s been a notable trend in complaints about roaming from Vodafone’s customers over the past 4-6 hours, which appears to be occurring across a variety of countries.
At the time of writing, it’s not yet clear what the cause is or how many customers have been impacted, although some of the responses by Vodafone’s staff on social media suggest that they are aware of something occurring. “We apologise for the inconvenience caused and we’re currently in the process of identifying the root cause,” said one support agent in response to a complaint from a roaming user in the USA.
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Sample Complaint 1
“I’m currently in Greece Athens and having issues with the network. For the past 5 hours I’ve been unable to make any calls nor have I got access to the internet.”
Sample Complaint 2
“We are getting 3G service or SOS in Toronto Canada. Basically no service for a few hours now.. What’s going on? It looks like others in different countries are also having issues. Please update.”
Sample Complaint 3
“I’m abroad and it’s said I have no service for about three hours now. This is also happening to another person I know abroad, also with Vodafone. The app is also down. What is happening and when will it return to normal?”
Sample Complaint 4
“Maybe you have already received a lot of queries regarding Vodafone Roaming issue currently experiencing including my self and my other phone in Europe. But ever since the past two hours there have been no coverage on either of my Vodafone phones.”
We have shot off a query to Vodafone to see if they have any additional comment or insight into the issue.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
Three’s roaming service will always be the best.
They better not swap out threes roaming for VF with the merger…
It’s really not. Three have lots of capped agreements in several popular countries. Vodafone don’t.
The thing you’ll find is in several countries where Vodafone also exists locally is that Vodafone roaming will allow you to connect to Vodafone only and no other networks; Three often allows access to several networks in these cases.
Absolutely not. Three’s data priority in the US meant I couldn’t load the simplest Web page in places like San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York etc. Even with full reception.
Of course when you get home and can call their support there’s nothing for them to identify as a problem.
“Data priority”
I recently used Three in NY and was able to access 4G on AT&T, T-Mobile and 5G on Verizon.
All networks never failed to load a website, and all were pushing at least 70mbps download after all the tests I did.
Access to multiple networks will always prevail as you’ll find yourself somewhere where, for example, a Vodafone network sucks but a non-VF network doesn’t.
Come back to me when that happens.
Three was unusable abroad in Spain. Total waste of time.
In Cyprus and I’ve had no service too
Vodafone advised they weren’t aware of any issues.
This outage affected Lebara too
This was a confirmed issue. Affected UK and abroad according to the notice they’ve sent out
Again today the same issued here in Italy, it was fixed yesterday evening, but reappeared…
Could this be an attack as outlined in the “UK Internet Domain Registry Nominet Suffers Cyber Attack” listed on here? Since it seems that roaming outside UK is affected, are Vodafone’s security teams checking?
Lol, no.
no LOL
Vodafone UK is experiencing a data connectivity issue affecting customers roaming under their network. This is due to a technical incident involving their GRX (GPRS Roaming Exchange). As a result, some customers may notice a degradation in data services, including unstable connections and difficulty maintaining data sessions. Vodafone UK and their technical teams are actively working to stabilise the service.
No roaming data or calls available on Vodacrap in the last four days in spain , they won’t even acknowledge there is a problem – to make matters worse there is no way to contact them , an utterly disgusting company.Cant wait to change supplier when i get back to uk .
Not working in Ireland either travelled from the north of Ireland to south of Ireland not leaving the country on a plane ✈️ lol in a car on phone for about 30mins through all the polava turn phone off then on etc etc etc until end of call operator says oh Vodafone are having issues with their app talk about a headache still not working she said it should have been working again at 7.30 last night aye right and still not resolved not good enough for a service you are paying for.
I have not had any service in Germany since Thursday! I am unable to work and VF is absolutely unapologetic and unhelpful stating that they are working on it and it should work in a few hours again. They have said that since Thursday.