I don't suppose anybody would have an idea about this - I have written to Lebara, but it will take days for them to reply.
In Seoul and it's a bit of a disaster not having any access to our phones. Not least because we can't pay the rent. Grovelling email to regie explaining the situation, which hopefully will go down okay.
But seriously? I can't believe I can't get a signal, no roaming, no nothing.
Are you sure it can work in Seoul? The website gives as roaming options:
Belgien, Bulgarien, Dänemark, Deutschland, Finnland, Frankreich, Griechenland, Grossbritannien, Irland, Italien, Kroatien, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Niederlande, Norwegen, Österreich, Polen, Portugal, Rumänien, Schweden, Slowakei, Slowenien, Spanien, Tschechien, Türkei, USA und Ungarn.
What carriers are available? Hubby never had an issue in Seoul with Vodafone
On their page for roaming, I've entered South Korea as place from and Switzerland as place too and I get the following, so I guess that must mean the option is there.
MY PRICES
Roaming
Landline
CHF 4.75
/ min.
Mobile
CHF 4.75
/ min.
SMS
CHF 0.80
/ SMS
Receiving calls: CHF 3.00 / min.
Connection fee: CHF 0.29 per call
Roaming data: CHF 10 per MB
Good luck! Hope you sort it out.
did you manually try to connect to all available networks?
try to search and select network manually. Some of the frequencies used in Asia are not supported on European mobiles.
Just to report on the end of this in case it applies more generally than just our experience. Despite discussing the situation with Lebara, there was no resolution. Since there is much that one cannot do without a phone now - such as access bank accounts - I suggest researching this carefully before heading off to Korea. I haven't had such issues in Japan or Singapore, no experience in other countries of the area.
As far as I could understand Lebara's advice it seemed to be to buy a local phone. Nothing improved on that. And I don't know if our Swiss cards would have worked in a local phone even if we'd thought that was a sensible option.
Yes, they have a global roaming charge for Korea, which makes it worse, since it implies that phones will work there. But putting a charge on a page and saying it will work isn't the same thing, it transpires, as actually working.
Try to manually connect to any mobile network. If you can't see any then your phone doesn't support whatever GSM networks that Korea uses. if you can see them but get refused when you try to connect (e.g. "Emergency Calls Only") then Lebara isn't working.
We are back and with a bit of luck won't end up in Korea again. But I would have tried your advice about manually connecting if I were still there. Or rather, I would have tried to try.
As it is, my phone has the right frequency support as per one of the links you provided, but still didn't work.
Anyway, lesson learned, I hadn't realised that it would be a possible issue.