[73775] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: OT- need a new GSM provider
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Rhett)
Thu Sep 2 21:10:53 2004
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 18:04:06 -0700
From: Joe Rhett <jrhett@meer.net>
To: vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com>
Cc: Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>, Paul Vixie <vixie@vix.com>,
nanog@merit.edu
Mail-Followup-To: vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com>,
Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>, Paul Vixie <vixie@vix.com>,
nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <20040902230927.GE16150@vijaygill.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Way off topic, hit delete now.
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 11:09:27PM +0000, vijay gill wrote:
> Triband phones mostly operate on 900/1800/1900 frequencies. There is a
> major US deployment of GSM on the "cellular" GSM 850 band. So if you are
> with a triband phone on anyone other than Tmobile (which uses only
> 1900gsm in the US), you will not get adequately covered. You want either
> a US centric triband for use in the US with ATT/cingular that operates
> on GSM 850/1800/1900 and then get a world triband on GSM 900/1800/1900
> and swap sims in and out (trivially easy to get most gsm phones
> unlocked)
I've had no drama at all going internation with T-Mobile service, using an
unlocked (nokiafree.org) AT&T 6310i phone.
> if you are going to be calling a lot while abroad, I suggest picking up
> an unlocked nokia 6310i and prepaid sims as you fly into airports.
> Put up a web page with your current phone number of choice.
Ugh. Much more convenient to just carry your phone with you ;-)
> Also note due to fraud mitigation, most phones only allow you to call
> within the country you are in or back to the home country, all the while
> charging you an exhorbitant price.
Um, sorry but I've never seen this. I used to world-roam on AT&T, and now
I do it with T-Mobile and never had any such drama. Kind of hard to place
a call in Europe without calling the next country over ;-)
AT&T used to rip me a new one for intl->intl calls, but t-mobiles rates are
roughly half that and apparently do pass-thru charges for calls which don't
leave a given providers network...? Anyway, I spent nearly a month in
Spain this spring and my cell phone was my only contact, for both voice and
many long hours of GPRS internet access, and the bill was only $890 or
something similar.
(I had a few 2.5k phone bills on similar length trips to England while
using AT&T...)
--
Joe Rhett
Senior Geek
Meer.net
