Forum Discussion
Smarty sim not working in Australia
Very disappointed that my Smarty Sim is not working in Australia. Didn’t realise, before travelling, it would be a problem and surprised when I got to Australia that I could only get an SOS mobile connection. My wife’s phone working fine on giffgaff and connecting to a local network. Then read all the related posts about problems people have had with Smarty in Australia. I have bought an Optus esim for data and calls/text (local and international) but still no way to access my calls to/from my usual uk number. If I had known in advance I would have forwarded calls to my uk number onto my wife’s phone before travelling but too late now.
Hope Smarty sorts this out soon or I am off to another network.
4 Replies
I've spent hours over the last few days trying to get my Smarty service to work is Australia on my iPhone, and a variety of other phones. Unfortunately, as many smarty community forum posts have now revealed to me, 90% of phones do not have the correct VoLTE IMS profile to support VoLTE for Smarty in Australia, resulting in an "SOS" only mode.
I so wish I had known about this issue prior to travelling to Australia. I stupidly assumed it would work having been here just 12 months ago, but of course Australia switched off its 3G networks during that time and enforced non-registration for phones that cannot successfully establish a VoLTE connection.
Despite spending an hour on the chat with Smarty support, there was no mention of this well known issue. This is very frustrating and poor customer service from Smarty for those of us travelling to Australia. I will be moving to another carrier as soon as I'm back in the UK, as I'm really disappointed with this shambolic experience and the fact the problem is clearly identified in the forums but tech support at Smarty know nothing about it and wasted a whole load of my time troubleshooting a well known issue.
Smarty need properly acknowledge this issue and provide an updated carrier IMS profile to Apple and other big phone brands ASAP, to get this sorted. The fix is easy and would save a lot of grief for customers travelling to Oz.The Smarty sim won’t work in Australia
Other people have had issues with sim.
I feel your pain. I have repeatedly asked Smarty to put a warning or remove the implicit advertising that roaming is available in Australia. They indicated to me that it is not false advertising and that they have users in Australia. If this was the case I asked them what are we all doing wrong (no response). I am switching to your wife’s provider as a few people have confirmed they work. It is all to do with Volte protocols. It appeared that people with Data roaming contracts were ok (and not on credit). However Giffgaff appear to only offer the same option. Appreciate you posting so that this time I can switch. Two of my financial institutions only offer 2FA SMS and I am sick of people suggesting ESims. I know Aussie SIM cards work fine in my iPhones (two phones) but 2FA requires those SMS codes. My complaints were registered over 10 months ago. Poor form guys. The merger has not made any difference it seems. We are only asking for a warning message to be added to the Smarty site or the removal of Australia from their list of countries you can roam in!!!!
Am in Australia and couldn’t understand why my add on wasn’t working. Now I do. Due to be travelling in some remote areas and I’m now off in search of an Aussie sim as I can’t be without the ability to make a phone call. Also very disappointed that Smarty doesn’t flag this issue up. It’s very poor service from them. I shall be reviewing my sim provider on my return to the UK.
