When traveling, I picked a data sim card with a Polish provider, called Play.pl
When using it in Poland, it works flawlessly; I have used it both in Spain and Germany and it has been a complete disaster, in some contexts.
If I use it to browse the web, it works properly. If I try to open a few tabs at once, many time out.
So I started to think that it can’t handle transferring many files at once.
When trying to use it for work purpose, which will pull a bunch of file simultaneously, it ALWAYS fails with timeouts. I do have a paid for roaming plan.
I decided to try things the scientific way:
- Play.pl card, Huawei modem, Poland: works
- Play.pl card, iPhone hotspot, Poland: works
- Play.pl card, iPad hotspot, Poland: works
- Play.pl card, Huawei modem, Germany: fails
- Play.pl card, iPhone hotspot, Germany: fails
- Play.pl card, iPad hotspot, Germany: fails
- Play.pl card, Huawei modem, Spain: fails
- Play.pl card, iPhone hotspot, Spain: fails
- Play.pl card, iPad hotspot, Spain: fails
- Lebara card, Huawei modem, Poland: works
- Lebara card, iPhone hotspot, Poland: works
- Lebara card, iPad hotspot, Poland: works
- Lebara card, Huawei modem, Germany: works
- Lebara card, iPhone hotspot, Germany: works
- Lebara card, iPad hotspot, Germany: works
- Lebara card, Huawei modem, Spain: works
- Lebara card, iPhone hotspot, Spain: works
- Lebara card, iPad hotspot, Spain: works
After these tests, there is no question that the Play.pl roaming plan doesn’t work if you want to do more than check facebook.
Support doesn’t really understand the validity of this test and blames the equipment.
So, my question is:
Are there any reasons why simultaneous file transfers would fail? obviously they work with the Lebara card so the issue is not protocol related.
Do providers have limits in their roaming agreement, like max bandwidth for all their customers? since I’m using the same amount of data, it shouldn’t be an issue for them to let me do this.
