Virgin mobile showing as roaming in Cork

Thoie

I'm in Cork, and about once a day my phone (on Virgin mobile) shows that it's roaming. This isn't impacting my bills - calls/data used while this is happening show up as part of my normal bundle on bills. I'm just curious as to why this is happening - anyone else come across it?

KildareP

Virgin uses Three for the underlying network.

Three itself is made up of two distinct networks - the "native" Three and the acquired ex-O2.

Virgin is established on the "native" Three side and whenever you are connected to an ex-O2 tower it will show up that you are roaming.

As far as I know they are gradually migrating everything to "native" Three so you should see it happening less and less frequently until all migration work has finished (oddly though, corporate accounts are still set up as ex-O2!)

SmartinMartin

Isn't Cork a different country???

Thoie

KildareP wrote: »

Virgin uses Three for the underlying network.

Three itself is made up of two distinct networks - the "native" Three and the acquired ex-O2.

Virgin is established on the "native" Three side and whenever you are connected to an ex-O2 tower it will show up that you are roaming.

As far as I know they are gradually migrating everything to "native" Three so you should see it happening less and less frequently until all migration work has finished (oddly though, corporate accounts are still set up as ex-O2!)

Thanks - it was one of those trivial things that bugged me that I couldn't explain

I presume that as it frequently happens in one location, that most of the time that location is picking up a Three tower, but sometimes the Three tower powers down and the ex-O2 signal becomes stronger? Or maybe weather conditions boost one over the other? They hardly switch between two masts randomly (though who knows)?

SmartinMartin wrote: »

Isn't Cork a different country???

Yes - I was hoping that Virgin were leading the rebellion and sneaking us off into our own alternative reality. I was going to run for the position of Grand Dictator for the new republic.

ED E

Thoie wrote: »

Thanks - it was one of those trivial things that bugged me that I couldn't explain

I presume that as it frequently happens in one location, that most of the time that location is picking up a Three tower, but sometimes the Three tower powers down and the ex-O2 signal becomes stronger? Or maybe weather conditions boost one over the other? They hardly switch between two masts randomly (though who knows)?

If you're phone thinks its roaming on that net its PRRL will likely rate the 272-02 net very low, it'll only go for it when it can't easily reach 272-05. An educated guess is that your coverage from 05 is borderline at the moment. If this is a recent development then Three may have a unit out of service.