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Virgin Mobile: Everything, Everywhere ... sort of
# 19 October 2011, 11:19 by Chris T
Virgin Mobile has finally made the announcement its tech-savvy customers have been waiting to hear for months: its customers now have access to the combined T-Mobile/Orange mobile phone mast network.
T-Mobile/Orange began offering roaming across the two networks to their customers late last year as part of the merger of the two businesses.
But that invitation to the new Everything Everywhere network did not automatically extend to customers of other networks that buy wholesale space on the T-Mobile network – including Virgin Mobile.
Virgin Mobile has now agreed access to the Orange network for its customers, but that access does not extend to 3G on Orange. When roaming from T-Mobile to Orange, only 2G coverage will be available – suitable for voice calls and texts, but little else. That means Virgin is not extending access to its mobile broadband customers yet.
Most Virgin Mobile customers will be able to tell which network their phone is currently using by looking carefully at the screen – if it’s the T-Mobile network they’re used to, the network name will be Virgin. If it’s Orange, the name is virgin … similar but for the missing capital letter.
New customers automatically get access to both networks, but existing customers need to opt in by texting YES to 789777.