For Americans Going To Europe Or Overseas

[dripley]

I live in Canada and 2 years ago I purchased a Pay-as-you-Go Vodafone 226 for use in Germany while we were on holiday. In October, we are going to visit Italy & Spain. My question is, can I purchase a different SIM card for this phone to use in both these countries or 2 seperate cards, one for each country?

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by dripley

I live in Canada and 2 years ago I purchased a Pay-as-you-Go Vodafone 226 for use in Germany while we were on holiday. In October, we are going to visit Italy & Spain. My question is, can I purchase a different SIM card for this phone to use in both these countries or 2 seperate cards, one for each country?

Let's start with the obvious....there is a good chance the phone is (sim) locked. Think of a computer booting up. The computer goes through a whole series of checks. So does a mobile phone. When a gsm phone starts up, the first thing it looks for is if there is a sim card. If not you immediately get a message to insert a sim card. The next thing it looks for is whether the sim card is authorized. You see since companies sell or give away phones, they want to be able to prevent you from leaving them and going to a competitor by simply inserting another sim card (one of the good qualities of gsm over some other technologies). So they put a code in telling the phone not to allow another company's sim card. This is called locking the phone. Now phones can be unlocked. For a while, the unlocking codes of Nokia had been compromised and it was relatively easy for anybody to unlock a Nokia phone by entering the unlocking code. the misereable telcoms did not like that and Nokia has tightened up its security on that. Pros can unlock most phones either with the code or by tampering with the boot up program with various cables.

So you have to determine if your phone is locked. If it is, you have to get it unlocked. It can be done in various way. You can do a google search and find people who do it over the net or find somebody at home withthe knowledge.

Once the phone is unlocked, you can put in any sim card you want. Whether you need separate sim cards for the two countries really depends on just how you are going to use your mobile. If mostly just for receiving calls, the first sim card you buy will probably be sufficient as the eu has moved to limit the amount you pay to receive calls when roaming (when you're using the card in a country other than its original country)...if OTOH you will be making a lot of calls, Italian and Spanish sim cards are reltively inexpensive but I don't know how much it costs to call Canada (or the USA) on them. Perhaps a little research is necessary. There are also cards out that allow free reception of calls throughout many parts of the world and don't give you the need to get separate sim cards. These are all parts of many discussions here.

BTW if you're unsure whether your phone is unlocked, simply insert the sim card of a company other than the one who sold you the phone. Even if the phone doesn't have the proper frequencies for the region you're in, either you will get a pretty immediate message when the phone starts to boot up that you have an unauthorized sim card or you won't get this message....if you don't get this message even if the phone doesn't register on a network, chances are the phone is unlocked.

[dripley]

Dear MATHA531,

Thanks for the prompt reply. My phone is locked and attempts to unlock it 18 months ago proved fruitless. I will have another try and hopefully I will be successful.

Denis