Question What's the international call barring PIN for a Three SIM?

MarkyPancake

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I've been with Three for years make use of their Feel At Home service when I'm on holiday (minutes, texts and mobile data come out of your talkplan as if you were still in the UK when in eligible international destinations).

The problem I've got is that despite my account having international calls enabled and my phone being compatible to use abroad (currently a Nexus 5, same issue on other phones), I can't phone out of non-UK destinations to UK numbers.

I've followed Three's instructions to call a UK mobile or landline (use +44 in place of the leading 0 for it to register as coming out of your talkplan) and I always get a recorded message from the international network along the lines of "the service you have attempted to use is restricted or unavailable". Data and texts work fine and come out my talkplan as per Feel At Home.

I've being trying to sort this out with Three for the past three years or so, as I can't test it when I'm in the UK, so it's not until I go away again that the problem rears its head when I try to call UK numbers. The irony is I can't call Three about this issue when I'm abroad, because of this international call barring. I've spent a while researching this and found there are various SIM codes you can use to see what your phone can and can't do and you can enable or disable these things using a PIN.

I've narrowed it down to my SIM's outgoing international calls feature, which reports as blocked. You can check this by dialling *#331#. When I do this, my phone says "call barring service was enabled for voice". Unblock it by dialling #331*[Barring PIN]*.

No one seems to be able to tell me what this barring PIN is. Does anyone here know?

Help me, AV Forums, you're my only hope!
 
Last edited:
My post inspired me to try Three again, so this time I used their web chat.

The advisor reset the call barring PIN and provided steps I needed to do that they haven't told me about before, so I was getting my hopes up this time as, but my phone didn't have the initial settings they wanted me to change. After some more dialogue I thought I would try #331*0000* again anyway and this time the phone came back with a message that call barring was disabled, instead of the error I kept getting before. Now when I check *#331# it says call barring service is disabled, instead of enabled for voice.

I don't know why this PIN reset wasn't performed on the numerous other interactions I've had with Three about this issue, but fingers crossed it's finally resolved. I can test it next week, as we're going to America for a couple of weeks and I really need to be able to contact my dad on-demand, as he's unwell.

Hopefully this thread can help others in a similar situation as me.
 

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