On Sunday, 8 November 2020 16:59:07 UTC, Tim Lamb wrote:
Follow up to the previously discussed Vodafone outage.

After nearly 2 weeks Vf grudgingly admitted there had been an issue
without giving any details. This came in the form, Great news, our
engineers have fixed the fault at your postcode.

Followed 25 minutes later with a second mail admitting they had failed
so to do:-)

Another *great news* mail this morning! We'll see. They didn't say but I
guess the outage was restricted to 3g.

Either way, it has forced me to try getting to grips with a less basic
phone. The first disappointment was that having fitted the SIM from my
old Alcatel, the contacts list was not accessible!

My Motoe5 play is not hugely user friendly in that it seems to expect
everything to be run through my Google account!

Tempting to go out and buy a cheap basic 4g phone from Tesco.

Sometimes you need a new SIM in order to access 4G. Partner is in that position - has a 4G-capable phone but restricted to 3G by the SIM. No cost to her to upgrade but keeps forgetting.