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MATHA531 · 19-03-2007, 08:20

Most European sims have roaming agreements in the USA with T Mobile USA and Cingular....the problem could be, not saying it will be, is the phone. Up until now, quad band phones started out sort of as a Motorola thing and several other manufacturer's have done a bit of work with them but they haven't really caught on and therein lies the rub....tti band phones come in 2 varieties (well short of Heinz BTW)...850/1800/1900 which are made for North American consumption and are sort of usually not the latest...companies introduce their new tri bands with 900/1800/1900 where they get the most bang for the buck (or quid or whatever vernacular is used to describe euro) that is places where everybody has to buy GSM phones...a good portion of the USA market doesn't use GSM...

Result is Europeans or others coming to the shores of the USA will find large areas of the country lack 1900 GSM coverage (for the most part it isn't a big problem in the big cities and along most interstates) and their mobiles would be useless (unless they bought a US prepaid which might or might not be GSM)...

In a similar vein, Americans travelling to much of the rest of the world have to be careful about this...I read of one person doing her due diligence, buying an unlocked GSM phone on ebay and attempting to use it with a prepaid sim in Croatia and she couldn't get the doggone thing to register on the Croatian netowrk; some of the idiots at mobile phone stores there swore to her the phone was locked (of course it wasn't...if the phone was locked, one gets a message to that effect just as it is turned on and tries to boot up)...the phone she had as an American nokia tri band and one of the problems with Nokia tri bands is they use the same model number for their phones produced for the world market (tri band 900/1800/1900) and the ones modified to work in the USA and some other countries mostly in theAmericas (tri band 850/1800/1900)...lacking the 900 band she was unable to get reception in Croatia as the carriers there are almost all GSM 900.

Same thing might happen if one uses an unlocked American phone and buys a prepaid O2 UK sim....as I understand it, O2 UK is predominantly 900 and so there would be many areas of the UK where a person with an American GSM phone model might buy an O2 UK sim and swear he or she has little or no coverage lacking 900...it probably is not as big an issue when roaming as you can almost always register, in the UK, on some network that operates on 1800 (T Mobile UK is predominantly 1800 which means Virgin Mobile UK is also predominantly 1800 as VM uses TM UK towers; incidentally since Mobile World referred to above uses O2 towers, such a phone would be pretty darn useless if one desired Mobile World; of course one can buy a very cheap dual band (900/1800) at most UK phone stores.

Ah the trials and tribulations caused because the USA was unable to coordinate with the rest of the world (which I understand might have been impossible given the use of the spectrum by other types of communication devices) when this whole cellular explosion hit.

	(#7)
MATHA531 (Offline) Senior Member Prepaid Specialist Posts: 869 Join Date: 15 Oct 2004 Country:	19-03-2007, 08:20 Most European sims have roaming agreements in the USA with T Mobile USA and Cingular....the problem could be, not saying it will be, is the phone. Up until now, quad band phones started out sort of as a Motorola thing and several other manufacturer's have done a bit of work with them but they haven't really caught on and therein lies the rub....tti band phones come in 2 varieties (well short of Heinz BTW)...850/1800/1900 which are made for North American consumption and are sort of usually not the latest...companies introduce their new tri bands with 900/1800/1900 where they get the most bang for the buck (or quid or whatever vernacular is used to describe euro) that is places where everybody has to buy GSM phones...a good portion of the USA market doesn't use GSM... Result is Europeans or others coming to the shores of the USA will find large areas of the country lack 1900 GSM coverage (for the most part it isn't a big problem in the big cities and along most interstates) and their mobiles would be useless (unless they bought a US prepaid which might or might not be GSM)... In a similar vein, Americans travelling to much of the rest of the world have to be careful about this...I read of one person doing her due diligence, buying an unlocked GSM phone on ebay and attempting to use it with a prepaid sim in Croatia and she couldn't get the doggone thing to register on the Croatian netowrk; some of the idiots at mobile phone stores there swore to her the phone was locked (of course it wasn't...if the phone was locked, one gets a message to that effect just as it is turned on and tries to boot up)...the phone she had as an American nokia tri band and one of the problems with Nokia tri bands is they use the same model number for their phones produced for the world market (tri band 900/1800/1900) and the ones modified to work in the USA and some other countries mostly in theAmericas (tri band 850/1800/1900)...lacking the 900 band she was unable to get reception in Croatia as the carriers there are almost all GSM 900. Same thing might happen if one uses an unlocked American phone and buys a prepaid O2 UK sim....as I understand it, O2 UK is predominantly 900 and so there would be many areas of the UK where a person with an American GSM phone model might buy an O2 UK sim and swear he or she has little or no coverage lacking 900...it probably is not as big an issue when roaming as you can almost always register, in the UK, on some network that operates on 1800 (T Mobile UK is predominantly 1800 which means Virgin Mobile UK is also predominantly 1800 as VM uses TM UK towers; incidentally since Mobile World referred to above uses O2 towers, such a phone would be pretty darn useless if one desired Mobile World; of course one can buy a very cheap dual band (900/1800) at most UK phone stores. Ah the trials and tribulations caused because the USA was unable to coordinate with the rest of the world (which I understand might have been impossible given the use of the spectrum by other types of communication devices) when this whole cellular explosion hit.