Freedom Mobile and Public Mobile customers experiencing US data roaming outage [Update]

Freedom Mobile recently removed T-Mobile as a roaming partner in the United States to have AT&T be its sole provider. However, it seems those currently travelling south of the border are having a challenge using data with Freedom’s AT&T-only roaming agreement.

Freedom customers have been complaining about an AT&T data outage for several days on social media. According to a number of customers on Twitter, and emails we’ve received, calls and texts are going through but data connectivity is not available.

The first complaints started on January 24th and Freedom Mobile has yet to release an official statement. However, support staff has been active on Twitter by attributing the issue with AT&T, noting, “our roaming partner is currently experiencing a network interruption affecting roaming data, they are working on resolving this as soon as possible.”

Freedom’s team have informed several customers that the issue could be with AT&T’s network not being able to connect with non-AT&T SIMs. However, Twitter user @AlexSchedmonton says his wife, a Bell subscriber, was able to connect to AT&T’s network and roam with data without any problems, which means if it’s an AT&T problem, it’s only impacting Freedom Mobile users.

Shaw purchased Wind Mobile in 2016 and the company recently rebranded to Freedom Mobile. Alek Krstajic, Freedom’s CEO, highlighted the rebranding effort as an opportunity for a fresh start and to shed any baggage associated with the Wind name.

Freedom Mobile currently has 1,052,758 wireless subscribers and recently went live with its LTE network in Toronto and Vancouver.

Update – January 31st: It seems that some Public Mobile customers are also experiencing data loss while roaming in the United States.

We have reached out to Freedom Mobile and Public Mobile for further details.

Update – February 1st: Public Mobile has sent us the following statement indicating that the data roaming is now back to normal for those in the United States. In addition, for those impacted, Public will issue refunds.

“We can confirm that a system code upgrade implemented last Friday inadvertently caused a data service outage for Public Mobile users who were roaming in the USA. The outage lasted from Friday until Tuesday, when we were able to address the issue and restore service. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we’ll be refunding customers who paid for roaming during the period when service was affected.”

Update – February 2nd: Freedom Mobile has resolved the issue and data is now back in action for customers visiting the United States. Here is the official statement:

“We have been testing LTE roaming in the U.S. and it created a complication that affected some Freedom Mobile customers trying to access data in the U.S. We’ve worked with our customers and they helped us identify the root cause of the issue. A fix was implemented overnight and the problem has been resolved. While this affected data for some customers, voice and texting services remained unaffected.”