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SMARTY eSIM Status

I rather Three worry more about coverage than concern themselves with esims, esims are a nice to have thing while coverage is essential.

Yes I get the benefits of esims but at the moment, it shouldn't be a important priority to Three, coverage is so much more important especially with the night and day experiences here.

For those who really want a Three esims, go to esim.net
 
still no updates from SMARTY on eSIM :(

In the meantime a family member directly on a Three SIM-only contract recently did a "Transfer to eSIM" on their iPhone 13 mini. Failed the first time, worked the second time. Had to update to iOS 18 to get the option to appear (latest carrier update bundle).

Crazy, they're on same Three carrier profile version as me on SMARTY. So seems they are blocking the "Transfer to eSIM" option if network name == SMARTY.
Get the feeling you’re going to be waiting a long time.
 
I rather Three worry more about coverage than concern themselves with esims, esims are a nice to have thing while coverage is essential.

Yes I get the benefits of esims but at the moment, it shouldn't be a important priority to Three, coverage is so much more important especially with the night and day experiences here.

For those who really want a Three esims, go to esim.net

Three coverage is fine. The only place I've had no coverage on Three in the past 4 years is in the middle of Forest of Dean. Besides the RAN team has nothing to do with SIM provisioning.

as mentioned, Three direct is doing eSIM for Pay Monthly and PAYG. Probably SMARTY will do something similar to giffgaff, since they have an app.
 
The only place I've had no coverage on Three in the past 4 years is in the middle of Forest of Dean. Besides the RAN team has nothing to do with SIM provisioning.
Only network that worked there is EE so not surprising, O2 has a bit of 2G coverage around though too (at least 2G and 3G should be mapped in the area now thanks to me locating some sites).
 
Only network that worked there is EE so not surprising, O2 has a bit of 2G coverage around though too (at least 2G and 3G should be mapped in the area now thanks to me locating some sites).

yeh EE have one of those brown poles there. It's the only place I've been where I had "No Service" on Three. Although on the plus side, it gave me a chance to try out the satellite feature on my phone :D
 
yeh EE have one of those brown poles there. It's the only place I've been where I had "No Service" on Three. Although on the plus side, it gave me a chance to try out the satellite feature on my phone :D
Tell us moe about your staellite adventure. Which handset and what profiles did you need? WS it data, voice & SMS ?
 
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Tell us moe about your staellite adventure. Which handset and what profiles did you need? WS it data, voice & SMS ?

just the iPhone 15 basic satellite service from Apple.

Apple purchased a large stake in Globalstar a while back, who were operating CDMA mobile technology on TDD band53 (~2.49Ghz) using their highly valuable global licence (small 11.5MHz slice just above 2.4GHz wifi).

The cool thing is the phone already has an antenna supporting this frequency, and the service is using standard mobile technologies underneath so it works on the Qualcomm modems Apple use on the iPhone without additional hardware.

I think apple might be operating n53 on it now after the ground stations got a major upgrade. Performance is really limited, restricted to just a few applications with high compression. Apparently it now works with Greenflag roadside assistance in the UK too.

In iOS 18 you can now send SMS and iMessages on it, looks like iOS now caches the NORAD tables locally too, as the new interface shows the satellites real-time position above the earth, apart from being a cool graphic, does help to point the handset
 
Three coverage is fine. The only place I've had no coverage on Three in the past 4 years is in the middle of Forest of Dean. Besides the RAN team has nothing to do with SIM provisioning.

as mentioned, Three direct is doing eSIM for Pay Monthly and PAYG. Probably SMARTY will do something similar to giffgaff, since they have an app.
I disagree, there's been plenty of comments here where people have said it's either really fast coverage or sluggish coverage.

eSIMs are a luxury not essential.

Indeed this is a comment from one user which sums up Three:

@Sox

"Three... I know people that use them in London and they're okay with it, so they kinda work if you don't need fast speeds or data to work everywhere? The problem is that my best and worst speeds are usually with Three. In some areas I get 100-1500Mbps reliably while in others I get sub 2Mbps or no data during peak hours. On a phone, I think it's better to get O2's 1-5Mbps everywhere than going from one extreme to the other."
 
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Three coverage is fine. The only place I've had no coverage on Three in the past 4 years is in the middle of Forest of Dean. Besides the RAN team has nothing to do with SIM provisioning.

as mentioned, Three direct is doing eSIM for Pay Monthly and PAYG. Probably SMARTY will do something similar to giffgaff, since they have an app.
I beg to differ.

I still see large swathes of 3G, a lot more than O2.
 
Three coverage is fine. The only place I've had no coverage on Three in the past 4 years is in the middle of Forest of Dean. Besides the RAN team has nothing to do with SIM provisioning.

as mentioned, Three direct is doing eSIM for Pay Monthly and PAYG. Probably SMARTY will do something similar to giffgaff, since they have an app.
Only place I see No Service on three is Leeds centre. Outskirts are fine.

EE also massively struggles there too; Vodafone and O2 have a DAS which is super useful (I flick on my VF SIM and use that in the centre).

In terms of day to day coverage, I have now found Three to cover (especially indoors) much better than EE does.

My boss now also has a Three unlimited SIM alongside his work EE SIM and, again especially indoors, EE struggles with calls massively - three, not a hitch.

Been quite a few times now where Three has also been much better for data than EE. This is just my local area but EE is really falling behind.

I was at Otley showground recently, EE was on B3+B3 with 30MHz combined spectrum, O2 and VF were B20 only.

Three had 1, 3, 32, 28 and were the only network still chugging along amongst the 11k people
 
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Only place I see No Service on three is Leeds centre. Outskirts are fine.

EE also massively struggles there too; Vodafone and O2 have a DAS which is super useful (I flick on my VF SIM and use that in the centre).

In terms of day to day coverage, I have now found Three to cover (especially indoors) much better than EE does.

My boss now also has a Three unlimited SIM alongside his work EE SIM and, again especially indoors, EE struggles with calls massively - three, not a hitch.

Been quite a few times now where Three has also been much better for data than EE. This is just my local area but EE is really falling behind.

I was at Otley showground recently, EE was on B3+B3 with 30MHz combined spectrum, O2 and VF were B20 only.

Three had 1, 3, 32, 28 and were the only network still chugging along amongst the 11k people
What frustrates me with Three is I find in some places they’re missing a site or only have one site where the other networks, primarily EE, have multiple.
 
What frustrates me with Three is I find in some places they’re missing a site or only have one site where the other networks, primarily EE, have multiple.
But does that matter if there's overreaching, usable coverage?

That's how I find most places like this. There's 2 locally where there's a 3 3G site and it has EE 4G - but 4G from Three overreaches from other sites and it works fine
 
But does that matter if there's overreaching, usable coverage?

That's how I find most places like this. There's 2 locally where there's a 3 3G site and it has EE 4G - but 4G from Three overreaches from other sites and it works fine
The problem is the coverage is usually good outside, go indoors and it’s gone.

I have noticed it in coastal towns a lot. I think a lot of it is to do with the site sharing. EE have both the T-Mobile and Orange mast in operation. Vodafone and O2 have their kit on both masts. Three just have the one or nothing at all.
 
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EE generally have the density to help the fact they use 1800MHz.

If you end up on Band 20 indoors though forget any throughput.
 
just the iPhone 15 basic satellite service from Apple.

Apple purchased a large stake in Globalstar a while back, who were operating CDMA mobile technology on TDD band53 (~2.49Ghz) using their highly valuable global licence (small 11.5MHz slice just above 2.4GHz wifi).

The cool thing is the phone already has an antenna supporting this frequency, and the service is using standard mobile technologies underneath so it works on the Qualcomm modems Apple use on the iPhone without additional hardware.

I think apple might be operating n53 on it now after the ground stations got a major upgrade. Performance is really limited, restricted to just a few applications with high compression. Apparently it now works with Greenflag roadside assistance in the UK too.

In iOS 18 you can now send SMS and iMessages on it, looks like iOS now caches the NORAD tables locally too, as the new interface shows the satellites real-time position above the earth, apart from being a cool graphic, does help to point the handset
I don’t get the option to send messages. Are you sure it’s now available in the uk for iOS 18?
 
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