BT Mobile in Europe

[iTraxx]

We recently arrived in France, first time we have been abroad since moving to BT mobile last month.
When we switched the phones back on after the flight everything seemed ok, 4G signal, data was working and I called the UK, however when I tried to call my wife her phone did not ring and vice versa. We could not receive any incoming calls.
5 calls to BT “technical” I use the word very loosely and they could not advise us why so I started changing some settings.
It turns out that you cannot receive incoming calls when abroad if you have the spend cap and data roaming cap set to zero, even though these calls would be within the monthly allowance!
They are now aware of the problem but no guessing how long it will take to get it fixed

[-Richie-]

You can remove the roaming cap yourself, login to www.bt.com/mybt and then under services click on mobile, see below :

[iTraxx]

Yes but then you wouldn’t be able to use the phone abroad at all!!!

[iTraxx]

My point is that the monthly spend cap and data roaming cap cannot be set to £0, they must be at £2.50 or higher in order to receive incoming calls when abroad

[JeffTG]

Hi

It looks to me that you would need International Calling switched "ON".  If you think about it, when abroad and calling the UK you have to put the UK +44 Code in front of the number.  The same applies to calling another UK registered phone even if it is sitting next to you.

This in effect is an International call.

When you set your Spend Cap to Zero, it automatically switches International Calls to "Blocked" which defaults "Use your phone abroad" to "Greyed" out as in the screen shot earlier in the post.

To allow "Roam Like Home" when in an eligible country - e.g. France - when you have set a Zero Spend Cap, you need to turn International Calling "ON" otherwise you will not be able to call another UK registered phone in the country where you are.  i.e. Call the UK phone number preceded by the International code +44 as you need to route the call via the UK even though the other phone may be right next to you.

Once International Calling is "ON" - you can switch the "Use your Phone abroad" to "ON" and you can use your Data, Calls, texts as if you were in the UK. 

The Spend Cap will remain at £0.00 so you don't need to set £2.50.

Hope that makes sense.

[pottyperson]

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@JeffTG wrote:
If you think about it, when abroad and calling the UK you have to put the UK +44 Code in front of the number.  The same applies to calling another UK registered phone even if it is sitting next to you.

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Not in my world. Both my wife and I (neither with BT Mobile) have used Roam Like Home to call each other while abroad, and to call contacts in the UK, by simply selecting the regular number from our contacts.

[iTraxx]

Hi @JeffTG 

I believe that you are correct in that when abroad ALL calls are effectively treated as an international calls and as such i tend to set up all my contacts phone numbers in international format even though most phones such as the more recent iphones automatically add the prefix under the "dial assist" feature. Also, we did have the "Calls to International Numbers" turned to ALLOW

However in this instance that is not the point, it IS possible to have the monthly spend cap and the data roaming cap set to zero AND to have the "Calls to International Numbers" turned to ALLOW

This is the setting that we had and we were able to make calls, to UK and French mobiles and landlines but we could not receive any incoming calls. when a call was made to any of the 3 mobiles that we have on the plan, the call immediately diverted to voicemail and then we received a missed call text within a minute.

As soon as the monthly spend caps were increased to £2.50 we were able to receive incoming calls.

[pottyperson]

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@iTraxx wrote:

Hi @JeffTG 

I believe that you are correct in that when abroad ALL calls are effectively treated as an international calls and as such i tend to set up all my contacts phone numbers in international format even though most phones such as the more recent iphones automatically add the prefix under the "dial assist" feature.

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I stand corrected, partially at least. Not much to go on as I recently changed my (Android) phone, but the call history shows the one call I've made on it from outside the UK had the +44 prefix added automatically. Must have been happening unnoticed on the previous phone ever since Roam Like Home went live; you live and learn!

[JeffTG]

Hi iTraxx,

Could I just ask one more question - you say that you changed International calls to "Allow" but did you also change the "Use your phone abroad" to "Allow" ?

Adding the £2.50 Spend Cap would automatically set "use your phone abroad" to "Allow" and presumably calls were fine after that ?

If you did actually set the "Use your phone abroad" to "Allow" whilst having the Zero Spend Cap and still had the issues then that should not happen.

Thanks again

JeffTG

[iTraxx]

@JeffTG
Yes, we had “International Calls” and “Use your phone abroad “ set to ALLOW with both spend caps set to £0 and you’re right there should be no issue.
I spoke several times to BT who were unable to work out what the problem was and did not suggest changing the spend caps.
I only came to this solution by changing the spend caps myself as a random exercise!