UK mobile provider and roaming with your Tesla?

[quentinsf]

On a recent podcast I heard about a guy in the US who drove his Tesla across the Canadian border and discovered that the data SIM didn't have any roaming capabilities, so he lost his streaming services and navigation (though the maps were downloaded and so still OK).

I was just wondering idly which service provider Tesla use in the UK, and whether we'd have any data services in other parts of Europe after the end of the year (when we're eventually able to go there again!)

And in general (anywhere), if your phone has a better data connection than the car, can you use it as a hotspot and connect the car to it by wifi? Does everything work transparently if you do that?

Quentin

 

[speedyranger74]

I don't know which provider, but from Uk to Romania no issue. In transit fot France, Germany, Austria, Hungary i have "issue" only when I cross the border.

 

[Medved_77]

The UK cars use a Dutch eSIM provided by KPN:

Internet, mobiel, TV, entertainment en meer. Hussel zelf | kpn

You can use the cars browser on, for example, whatsmyip.org to see this info. Open YouTube and you'll see YouTube NL and Dutch adverts will be played.

Previously it was a mix of KPN and Movistar (Spain) until the Movistar terms of service changed which resulted in a lot of owners being unable to wake their car from the app due to the SMS protocol used to wake the car.

Key thing here is that it's an eSIM, so the provider can be changed with relative ease based on whatever geo-political situation we're currently dealing with.

At the moment it'll work fine in Europe and presumably any other countries that KPN has roaming agreements with. When crossing borders, it can take a while (20/30 min) for the service to select the new roaming partner.

Next year, mobile providers will have the right to charge roaming fees but at the moment it doesn't look like any are going to exercise that right for now. I suspect if they did, Tesla would strike a deal with one of the UK carriers for UK owners.

As for tethering to your mobile phone, yes this is possible anywhere and useful when perhaps the carrier of the eSim has a lesser signal strength than the carrier you use for your mobile phone.

 

[Jason71]

On a recent podcast I heard about a guy in the US who drove his Tesla across the Canadian border and discovered that the data SIM didn't have any roaming capabilities, so he lost his streaming services and navigation (though the maps were downloaded and so still OK).

I was just wondering idly which service provider Tesla use in the UK, and whether we'd have any data services in other parts of Europe after the end of the year (when we're eventually able to go there again!)

And in general (anywhere), if your phone has a better data connection than the car, can you use it as a hotspot and connect the car to it by wifi? Does everything work transparently if you do that?

Quentin

you can connect to a hotspot but I believe as soon as you put it in drive it switches back to LTE. so then you have to connect it again before driving off. and you have to do this every time you park. Its almost like its being done deliberately to make life difficult