Re: Service in St. Thomas

Greg wrote:
Dennis Ferguson <dcferguson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:slrneve4sk.85.dcferguson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

On 2007-03-13, Greg <x_gblum@xxxxxxx> wrote:

.................. <snip>
have a Sony Erickson W300i. One of the capabilities I made sure of before upgrading my phone was that it was a full quad band unit. Supposedly the SE is.

What happened to me was that even though my phone showed a full 5
bars of signal strength, it displayed "No Network Service" except
when first powered on. If I cycled the phone on and off, it came up
with Cingular service and let me make a call.
.................. <snip>
I'll make a huge guess that could be entirely out to lunch. Was the
place where you were spending time near Red Hook, or at least at the
eastern end of the island, maybe on the north coast? And do you not
have international roaming enabled on your account?

.................. <snip>

If any of this sounds familiar to you then my guess (grasping at
straws) would be that you might be seeing this other network now
because of your quad-band phone, and that your phone is somehow
sticking with this strong network that it couldn't get service from
rather than searching for the weak Cingular home network. This
behaviour is kind of broken, though I know it is approximately what
CDMA phones do when they go into E911 mode so it might not be entirely
inexplicable.

If none of this seems right, however, then never mind.

Dennis Ferguson

You may be onto something, but not the location. I was in the south central part of the island - Charlotte Amalie. I do not have International Roaming on my account. It sure seemed like the scenario you were describing, however. I was getting a full strength signal from someone, just not Cingular. When I cycled the phone and it came back as Cingular the strength was 2-3 bars. When it reverted to 'no network' it jumped to full.

I had also thought about the GAIT issue, but with discounted it since my SE was showing such high strength of something.

You'll often see a good signal that you can't use with both GSM and CDMA if there is no roaming agreement with whoever the signal belongs to.

The reason I would think that GAIT had something to do with it with the 6340 is because it's likely that any AMPS service there belonged to either Cingular (AT&T) or Verizon, and the Cingular AMPS would be fair game for non-roaming service (and perhaps the Verizon AMPS as well).

I'm not technical enough to know for sure, but I would have thought that my GSM phone would not even know a TDMA signal existed.

I think it's a mistake to believe that the GSM signal that your SE phone picked up was the same signal that the GAIT phone was actually using in the past.

Remember that the 6340 would not pick up a 900 MHz or 1900 MHz GSM signal, but the SE will. There are too many variables here to be sure of anything, but the whole reason for the GAIT phones was to be able to use the more extensive AMPS and TDMA networks while the GSM network was being built out.

My 6340 didn't really tell me when it was in GSM, TDMA, or AMPS mode so I wouldn't have known if it was switching. I do know that I had no trouble making or receiving calls and didn't have any extra charges (roaming or otherwise) on my bill after returning home.

Because you were probably not roaming, you were probably on AT&T's AMPS network, if it existed there. There also may have been a roaming agreement with the other AMPS network. Last time I roamed onto the Cingular/AT&T AMPS network on my Verizon handset I was not charged roaming, and I assume that this is because Verizon once had a roaming agreement with AT&T Wireless for AMPS.

Maybe you could use the 6340 on your trips to St. Thomas, and the SE at other times.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Verizon to open cell network to all phones
    ... *ITS* network is what they own and operate. ... Which does not now nor will include any GSM carrier. ... network" includes their roaming partners, AT&T, because they are ... out to the GSM carriers. ...
    (alt.cellular.verizon)
  • Re: Verizon to open cell network to all phones
    ... ...except that then they'd have to build out a GSM network. ... That's how they allowed roaming back before there was a complete CDMA ...
    (alt.cellular.verizon)
  • Re: *PING* - Jud Hardcastle
    ... It started in TDMA mode and never found a GSM signal. ... Which network the phone will select depends on how the phone is ... This is where the mobile is homed to a GSM ... a GSM Neutral system. ...
    (alt.cellular.cingular)
  • Re: pure python for sms
    ... SMS responses via this pagehttp://sms.personal.com.ar/Mensajes/msn.htm ... network; communicate with a gateway which relays messages to the GSM ... The python class you send to me looks like ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: Does SSID Broadcast have to be enabled?
    ... Yes the AP does play a role in roaming. ... 64 bit wep but works perfectly fine on our other friends network who has the ... >> switch to the strongest one that it finds. ... with SSID ...
    (microsoft.public.pocketpc.wireless)