Sim free 3G phone + Orange = no 3G So you’ve got an old 2G phone and decide Orange’s upgrade charges are ridiculous (£200 fee for upgrade + cost of phone!), and you’re stuck on a contract, so you decide to just go out and buy a nice new 3G phone ’sim-free’. You think you can just pop your existing sim into the phone and everything works? Think again. Well the sim does work, but it turns out the sim is a 2G sim. To be able to use any of the 3G functionality of the phone and connect to 3G networks, you need a 3G sim (a USIM). Fine you think, call the operator and ask for a 3G sim, and you don’t even mind paying a small cost for it. Problem is you’re on Orange and they flat refuse to give you a 3G sim unless you go out an buy a new Orange branded 3G contract or PAYG phone! After numerous phone calls and even threatening to cancel, I spoke to someone who did offer me a solution. Walk into a Carphone Warehouse and buy a pay monthly USIM for £15 (one off payment, it’s not a contract your just buying the sim card). Wait a second, I offered to pay Orange for a 3G sim card, plus they would make money from me using 3g services, but their unofficial solution is to pay another company? Oh well, I popped down to my local carphone warehouse, picked up a sim there. The guy at the shop couldn’t do anything to transfer the sim cards but was more than happy to sell it to me. I then rung up Orange and got the new sim activated with my current contract and guess what, 5 minutes later I was video calling. So if you’re on an Orange contract with a standard sim card, and you buy a new phone not from Orange and its 3g, just go to the carphone warehouse and pick up a new USIM for only £15. Hope this saves someone the time and hassle I went through. Any questions just ask.
I have been in the exact same position with Orange. I had the Orange spv E650, but I still had a good 7/8 months left of run on my contract and I fell in love with the Touch Diamond as it had almost everything I wanted. I phoned orange and enquired about how much the upgrade cost would be. Apparently it was about £350 before adding the cost of the phone. I didn't really want to pay that much so I asked about if it was okay to buy it sim free from and shop and the CSR said, it "shouldn't" be a problem. I went on ebay and got an Orange Touch Diamond for about £300 and was quite happy with it, not really understanding at the time why the seller had taken the 3G sim card out. Soon became apparent! The E650 is a 2G (2.5G?) phone and therefore the sim I had was also a 2G sim. Which meant No 3G service for me! As said above Orange will not give out a 3G Pay Monthly sim to anyone. Not realising the difference I read many Forum's where people suggested buying a 3G PAYG sim and calling orange to transfer them over. And as many Forums have in their reply to this suggestion. It's no good, Orange will not transfer a PAYM number to a PAYG sim. Some Forum's suggested calling and requesting a sim update, this does not work, there are serial's on the sim and with Orange, they are either 2G or 3G and there's no updates to change them. So I emailed Orange on their website I got a reply saying to phone them on 150 I phoned Orange on 150 and went through to retentions (have always found that retentions CSR's have a bit more sense and power to be helpful. The CSR said he'd transfer me and arrange a sim update which would get it working! Success I thought, but the guy I was transferred soon told me that it was not possible to update my sim to 3G and I could not under any circumstances have a 3G sim whilst my account showed me having a 2G phone. I said if that was the case then after 10+ years of being with Orange I would leave as this was a stupid policy. I was told they could do nothing for me and that if that was how I felt then I'd have to leave. I looked online for more suggestions and found people had suggested emailing Orange executives at executive.office@orange.co.uk and complaining. So I emailed them explaining that I wished to go back to using my old SPV M5000 on 3G (Which is the same excuse I'd tried all along thinking they may support an old mobile as opposed to a purchased one) I received a call back from Orange by a not so helpful CSR who told me my contract was linked with my sim and it was simply not possible to change my sim for a 3G. I got quite angry and said if that was Orange's attitude then I looked forward to leaving them as soon as I could. Again I was told that if that was what I wanted to do then they couldn't stop me. Still annoyed from that phone call I wrote another email and I really went to town complaining about everything they had told me, how stupid this policy was, it's no wonder there are lots of websites criticising them for this policy. And again promising to leave as soon as I could, and explaining how this incident had made me look into other Service Providers and that I was now looking forward to leaving as I now realised I could get better financial deals and faster 3G with other SP's. I also stated that I did not wish to be called back and I now wished any replies to be by emails. What can I say; today a little envelope came through my door with no explanation whatsoever. I opened it and inside was a credit card piece of plastic with a sim card. The sim card was black and had a logo "Rocket Fast" on it. With it a little Orange branded leaflet "To the rescue, pay monthly replacement sim card" With full instructions on how to move my number across to it. 30mins later I'm up and running with my 3G sim card! Success finally! They can do it! Just keep hassling them, but having now looked into it I serious suggest people look at Vodafone (speed) and T-Mobile (data plans) before you consider renewing your contract's with Orange! All the best, and I hope this helps you Garfydude
Ahhh, my sister is on orange and she had this problem! Thanks for that! Il give her the simple solution.