National Roaming - Germany's largest ISPs now allow each other's customers onto their own network.

[Senzelian]

Summary

 

Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's parent company) and Telefonica (O2) have announced to start a national roaming service, which should help to eliminate low coverage zones in rural areas. As of right now 200 locations are covered and plans are to expand it to 700 locations by the end of this year.

 

On top of that Vodafone, Germany's 3rd largest cellular provider has also partnered with Telefonica to enable 1100 additional locations to be shared between them. This number is supposed to grow to 2000 in the coming months.

 

This service is provided for free to all customers and does not require any change to a customer's contract, phone or sim card.

 

 

 

 

Quotes

 

Quote

Wie Telefónica in seiner Bekanntmachung beschreibt, starten die beiden Unternehmen ihre Kooperation gegen Funklöcher mit dem gegenseitigen Zugang zu jeweils 200 Mobilfunkstandorten. Noch im Laufe dieses Jahres soll die Zusammenarbeit noch deutlich ausgebaut werden, sodass sich die beiden Netzbetreiber bis Jahresende jeweils bei bis zu 700 Standorten wechselseitig Zugang gewähren. Vor allem im ländlichen Raum soll sich damit der Mobilfunkzugang von "mehreren 100.000 Menschen" über alle Anbieter hinweg deutlich verbessern.

(German, Sorry I'm too lazy to translate this time)

 

 

 

 

 

My thoughts

 

This is the best news to ever come from these three idiot companies ever. It took them way too long, but it's finally here.

For anyone that doesn't know: There are three big cellular ISPs in Germany that all have relatively equal market share (~30 - 35%). None of them were able interested in solving the LTE coverage issues that Germany had for many years. Some parts of Germany, even some of them relatively close to cities, didn't offer any coverage at all, if you didn't have a contract with the correct provider. With all of them together it should now be possible to cover almost the entire country.

 

I know for example in my town I wouldn't have any coverage with Vodafone, but with O2 and Telekom I would have 4G.

 

 

 

 

Sources

 

https://winfuture.de/news,132027.html

https://www.telefonica.de/news/corporate/2022/09/ausbaukooperation-im-laendlichen-raum-o2-telefonica-und-telekom-versorgen-gemeinsam-erste-graue-flecken-in-der-mobilfunkversorgung.html

[HomeBoi]

Good thing, in Norway our biggest ISP don't want to do this anymore after the new challanger came in and rented all their antennas and basestations and then proceeded to build their own network to fill in the gaps. After they filled the gaps they also buildt a 1 to 1 of the big ISP and had suuuuuperior coverage and speeds until the original ISP went: "We feel you intentionally shafted us so we are now ending the deal".

 

So now we back to the old, which ISP has best coverage in your area unless you live in one of 4 big cities Sadge.

[Dracarris]

On 9/24/2022 at 1:57 PM, Senzelian said:

Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's parent company) and Telefonica (O2) have announced to start a national roaming service, which should help to eliminate low coverage zones in rural areas.

Interesting, as that was the status quo about 15 years ago already. Guess they stopped that some time between then and now, leaving basically only Tmobile and Vodafone as usable networks with O2 and Eplus being basically useless (no clue what happened to the latter).

[Senzelian]

Just now, Dracarris said:

Interesting, as that was the status quo about 15 years ago already. Guess they stopped that some time between then and now, leaving basically only Tmobile and Vodafone as usable networks with O2 and Eplus being basically useless (no clue what happened to the latter).

15 years ago there was no LTE.

 

The entire E-Plus network was bought up by Telefonica and created at the time the largest network in Germany. It took a lot of effort for Telekom and Vodafone to catch up. Nowadays their networks are quite similar, with Vodafone being the worst, O2 in the middle and Telekom being the best. 

 

As a O2 customer for over 7 years I can assure you that O2 is definitely not useless. None of the providers are. The obvious problem is, that in some parts of the country certain providers do not have any coverage. 

 

Btw.: Funny you said O2 was useless and not Vodafone. I've worked in telecommunications, believe me, they're the worst. 

[Dracarris]

9 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

15 years ago there was no LTE.

well yes but still that applied to GSM and 3G.

 

10 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Btw.: Funny you said O2 was useless and not Vodafone. I've worked in telecommunications, believe me, they're the worst. 

Again, back then the Telefonica network, which, back then, was only O2, turned very bad the moment they lost the roaming deal with T-Mobile. I can still remember how often my phone used the magenta network even though I was on a O2 contract.

 

All I can say now that every time I visit Germany (no longer living there) and my phone uses O2 as a roaming network the connection is usually very poor, often falling back to Edge, while whenever I have T-Mobile or Vodafone it is decent. Also some of my German friends are on Vodafone contracts and they seem to work well.

[Senzelian]

8 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

All I can say now that every time I visit Germany (no longer living there) and my phone uses O2 as a roaming network the connection is usually very poor, often falling back to Edge, while whenever I have T-Mobile or Vodafone it is decent.

Yeah, exactly what I said. In certain regions you'll have good coverage from one provider, but not from another. I don't what you want to hear.

 

Here is O2's map, which basically hasn't changed since 2017 when they finished the E-Plus merger.

 

 

Telekom's and Vodafone's network looks basically the same.

 

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

In certain regions you'll have good coverage from one provider, but not from another. I don't what you want to hear.

Not quite sure if we're talking about the same thing. All I said was whenever my phone choses to go for O2 the connection was really bad while I never experienced a bad connection from T-Mobile or Vodafone and none of my friends which have a local Vodafone contract seem to experience the poor coverage you describe.

 

Just an example, I recently visited the old town of Heidelberg. In the yard of the Heidelberg castle, a tourist magnet, all I could get was O2 Edge which drained my battery in record time. That is laughable. Not sure what your map above considers "Versorgung" - that you can make a phone call, Edge? If it means usable mobile internet then Germany would be fine in terms of its cellular network, which is clearly not the case. There are still many spots left where you get very poor or no coverage at all.

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

Here is O2's map, which basically hasn't changed since 2017 when they finished the E-Plus merger.

Yeah the experience I was earlier describing was from much before the E-Plus merger at a time where both O2s and E-Plus' networks individually were rather useless if not combined with another roaming partner such as T-Mobile for O2.

[Senzelian]

30 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Just an example, I recently visited the old town of Heidelberg. In the yard of the Heidelberg castle, a tourist magnet, all I could get was O2 Edge which drained my battery in record time. That is laughable.

You should get your phone checked or your contract. I live near Bruchsal, and I've been to Heidelberg, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and all the sorrounding areas. They all have 5G coverage and with standard O2 contracts of up to 300Mbit/s. 

 

Right now I'm in the south near Friedrichshafen and I'm on 5G aswell. Same goes for Frankfurt, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Düsseldorf, Potsdam, München, ... The list goes on. There is my personal experience. 

 

This is all with a Pixel 6 Pro on O2's "Grow" contract. Previously O2 M. 

 

I also have a business phone running Vodafone. The experience is basically the same, tho I hate to admit it, as I absolutely despise these idiots. 

 

30 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Not sure what your map above considers "Versorgung" - that you can make a phone call, Edge? If it means usable mobile internet then Germany would be fine in terms of its cellular network, which is clearly not the case. There are still many spots left where you get very poor or no coverage at all.

The entire topic has been about 4G/LTE connectivity. 3G is obviously dead and if I was talking about Edge I'd make a fool of myself. 

 

 

Honestly, if you have personal grievances with O2, fine, but don't state untrue facts. 

 

30 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

 

[Dracarris]

19 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

You should get your phone checked or your contract. I live near Bruchsal, and I've been to Heidelberg, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and all the sorrounding areas. They all have 5G coverage and with standard O2 contracts of up to 300Mbit/s. 

My friends on national contracts had the same experience. We had good coverage in Heidelberg city but not up in the castle.

19 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Honestly, if you have personal grievances with O2, fine, but don't state untrue facts.

I only told my factual experiences.

Not sure why you are getting so defensive about Telefonica.

Again: If the map above is true then why do you also think that Germany still has a cellular coverage problem, which it absolutely has? If this is all the 4G coverage you can get from Telefonica, it would be jolly fine.

[Senzelian]

34 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

My friends on national contracts had the same experience. We had good coverage in Heidelberg city but not up in the castle.

I only told my factual experiences.

Not sure why you are getting so defensive about Telefonica.

Again: If the map above is true then why do you also think that Germany still has a cellular coverage problem, which it absolutely has? If this is all the 4G coverage you can get from Telefonica, it would be jolly fine.

I assumed you understood German. 

 

As the map says, it doesn't cover all areas equally. In some areas you might not get coverage within buildings. Logically that automatically means that not all 4G coverage is equal. There are obvious speed and latency differences that depend often on current utilization of a individual antenna. One of the major advantages of 5G is to improve on that. 

 

On top of that the map doesn't show anything in detail. Even at 99% coverage you will still encounter small black spots and spots in which antenna transition takes longer than expected. This is amplified if you're moving, which is why so many people complain about the coverage on the Autobahn or country roads.

 

Where I am right now is a good example. My Vodafone contract only delivers 2Mbit/s here, even tho my iPhone 12 Pro is connected to 4G. So there is coverage. My O2 contract on my Pixel 6Pro delivers 40-50 Mbit.

 

34 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

I only told my factual experiences.

Not sure why you are getting so defensive about Telefonica.

"being basically useless" isnt a factual experience. 

[Dracarris]

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

As the map says, it doesn't cover all areas equally. In some areas you might not get coverage within buildings. Logically that automatically means that not all 4G coverage is equal. There are obvious speed and latency differences that depend often on current utilization of a individual antenna. One of the major advantages of 5G is to improve on that. 

You are talking on a whole different level. Myself and basically everyone else I know that lives in Germany regularly experiences straight out no coverage or only Edge, outside of buildings. We are not talking about super small black spots, just straight out far worse coverage than in basically almost every other European country. Heck in Sweden even in the middle of nowhere with no human in sight for several km, in the woods or on lakes we always had 4G coverage. Germany is far far away from such a level of coverage and basically no one is denying that, not even politicans.

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

"being basically useless" isnt a factual experience. 

My factual experience is: It was basically useless. I don't get your point. Without the T-Mobile roaming there was very little to no coverage outside of city and town centers. As I pointed out earlier that was a long time ago before they merged with E-Plus, which was equally bad at the time as a standalone network. It all might be different now.