Ah, I didn’t know they were routing it through their own systems, instead of just buying airtime.
Makes sense it was 3, although I’ve used it in other non EU free roaming countries with no throttling.
Yeah they even had to send everyone out new sims some time ago to get them on their new backend that ‘gave them more control’
I wonder if it’s got anything to do with the wholesale cost of data. Data is really expensive in the US, so maybe they throttle to limit use. Wild guess…
Yes when I ring up next I will be insistent I get my PAC code.
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Our family uses Vodafone. I briefly swapped to EE for a year to try it out and found the service had nothing on Vodafone. I often found EE would say I had full 4G signal but not even load a web page, particularly in cities. I haven’t used 3, but a contractor where I work was with them when he first joined and literally couldn’t get a signal — not a good advertisement 
Well I phoned up the other day and what I was offered I believe is good, kept my current usage limits for £11.50 for 6 months and its a 1 month contract.
Edited: Ignore this. Had a bad CS experience not long after posting this and would no longer recommend. Story further down the thread. 
Another vote for Smarty.
I have the Small package (unlimited calls, unlimited texts, 2GB data) and it’s enough for me - plus I usually get the unused data discount. My bill is never more than £7.50, in fact last month’s was only £5.80. 
Never had any issues and signal is always great. I’d recommend it to anyone, and there are larger packages available for those who use more data.
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I use EE for mine and my wife’s mobiles, home phone and broadband I got a good deal on the phone and broadband much better than I was getting with BT. And where we live it gives us the best 4g coverage. Being able to share data between devices is also handy. And the mobile internet dongle is great in the car for long journeys with the kids.
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That’s interesting. I’ve recently signed up to Smarty and went for the new unlimited data at £25pm. With a referral code, I get month 2 for free and a £10 Amazon voucher, making it £7.50pm for two months unlimited. I intend to downgrade in month 3, and my normal usage is between 1GB and 2GB. So I was going to go for the large package (8GB for £15) as I’d get most of it back in month 4. I couldn’t really see the point of not getting the 8GB whatever my usage would be.
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Sounds like a plan!
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I really wanted to go with smarty and even though i’m with three at the moment when I tried a smarty sim the signal was much worse sadly.
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I moved from three to smarty didn’t notice any drop in speeds, the only thing could be you aren’t getting 4g+ now when you used to?
smarty referral, 2nd month free plus £10 Amazon https://referme.to/rw4Nj2o
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That’s a shame, could be area dependent. 
Strange though considering you haven’t had the same issue with Three.
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Vodafone have a 100gb package for £24 per month right now. Or Three unlimited for £20.
The Vodafone 100GB Red Entertainment deal for £30 a month, and with £144 cashback through the year, making it £18 a month is amazing value. (available at several online retailers). Global Roaming Plus, so free roaming in 77 countries including the USA, 500 mins to EU numbers, and includes Spotify, Now TV, Sky Sports or Prime Video. No FUP, and tethering allowed.
It also helps if your bank does cheque imaging as you just upload your bill every two months, get a cheque, snap a pic. No need to post it off 
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I think it’s to do with volte or 4g supervoice as three call it. Three support it but I don’t think smarty does. Well not at the moment anyway.
It depends what the company buys from the supplier. Most mobile operators with their own bands and towers will only allow access to a subset of the radio bands and no access to their specific 4g tech like votle. That’s why there cheaper usually. Lots of virtual operators for example only have one 4g band available rather than the 2 (or 3 with EE) normally available.
Smarty does have access to two 4g bands, including the 800MHz one that three use for VoLTE, but its likely they need to implement that themselves, or perhaps buy the service from three.
I don’t know all the ins and outs, etc, but Smarty are owned by the same company which owns Three, so I’d imagine there’d be a special deal for them.
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One caveat with Smarty I’ve experienced compared to seemingly any other network is they don’t support texting to shortcodes, which meant I couldn’t respond to PayPal fraud detection texts or unsubscribe from any service that uses shortcodes rather than full phone numbers.
This might be common among several MVNOs, my mum recently couldn’t respond to the PayPal texts on Sky Mobile. That’s not prepaid though, I didn’t understand it.
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