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How (and how well) do Wireless "Worldphones" Work?
Milo_Mindbender asks: "I've seen a number of new phones (like the Sony T616) advertised as 'worldphones' that handle three or four GSM bands. As someone who travels to Japan and Europe occasionally I'm wondering how (and how well) these actually work. Can you get a temporary or prepaid SIM with a local carrier and just swap it or are the US carriers 'service locking' phones so you have to do international roaming with them even in foreign countries?"
all mobile phones in europe have a removable SIM card that allows you to change your operator as easy as swapping the sim-card (which is basically a small chipcard).
Most new phones are locked and will only accept the operators' simcards, however it is common that after one or two years you can 'unlock' your phone either for free or for a small amount so any sim-card can be used in that phone. This will allow you to buy a pre-paid SIMcard in any country in europe and use it in your phone without any administrative changes needed.
however, as I've seen in the US none of the mobile phones actually have a removable SIMcard, therefore you are tied to your current operator... talk about monopolizing mobile phone markets? there ya go... you are unable to purchase a genuine european phone and use it in the US. protest at your local senator.
To roam, you need two things. Hardware that works in the area you're using it in - if GSM, there are 3 frequency bands and a lot of new handsets support all of them.
You next need a phone company to service you - if in a foreign country this means either your service provider has a roaming agreement with a foreign service provider, or you stick a new SIM in the phone from a new service provider.
the latter option will change your phone number.
Fairly simple, really - just ask your phone company.
Second, if you buy the phone from the carrier, it will be locked and will not allow you to use a SIM card from another carrier. However, you can usually get the unlock code after you have had the phone awhile - T-mobile has been known to give out the unlock codes after 90 days.
You could also buy an unlocked phone from an independent dealer, but understand that this will cost significantly more. Unlocked phones *will* work with US carrier SIMs.
Jeff
Before this gets out of hand, most of the US is not on GSM. Two issues here:
* the frequency bands allocated (the 4 bands supported by these GSM phones) and
* the encoding (GSM, CDMA, TDMA)
GSM is gaussian shift keying (overlapping gaussian shaped pulses)
CDMA is code-division mux'ing (using the real & imaginary parts of the signal as bits)
TDMA is time-division mux'ing (splitting up the signals into time slots)
This is a dupe. We get this every two months; I'll let you do the search to grab the links for each.
What I post every time when this question comes up:
1. Get a cheap cell phone that works in the local area that you go to.
2. Get a temporary SIM card at your local 7-11.
World phones are overpriced both in initial cost and service. Do NOT proceed.
Enjoy!
Switching was a royal pain in the ass, since they had totally replicated everything staffing-wise and billing-wise and all that, for the new network, and at that point, folks still weren't very clear on where to forward existing customers who wanted to switch. Eventually, though, I got a nice shiny Nokia 3650 (at no small expense).
At that point in time, I was told up front that GSM was pretty much available only in and around the biggest town in the area (where, conveniently, I live), and that service would be coming soon further out (where TDMA service already was, and had been, available). Okay, no problem.
10 months passed. I noticed that there my coverage wasn't nearly as good as it had been. More than about 10 miles from town in any direction and I had no service. I went for a long bike ride, spent 7 hours incommunicado, and my wife was calling hospitals to see if my body had been brought in.
Why did all this happen? Simple. The Nokia 3650 is a 900/1800/1900MHz "World Phone." Here in town, ATT's tower has GSM on 850/1900MHz... everywhere outside town it's 850MHz only. Whoops, ATT.
Oh, and of course you can go to any ATT kiosk or store in town and buy a 3650 to this day. The new 3620 (850/1900MHz, yay!) isn't yet available in stores... but it will be, soon... I hope...
CDMA networks (like Sprint and Verizon)
GSM/GPRS networks (like T-Mobile and Cingular)
Nort America Coverage Map
Typical US markets are a mix of the following: (800=800 MHz; 1900=1900 MHz)
800 AMPS
800 TDMA
800 CDMA (verizon)
800 iDen (nextel)
1900 CDMA (sprint pcs)
1900 GSM (at&t, cingular, t-mobile)
1900 TDMA (at&t)
That's just bs... All you have to do is buy a cellphone that isn't locked to a certain carrier, and that handles the GSM-band of the countries you're planing on visiting, and then either roam or buy a local SIM-card.
I've been roaming within europe since mid 90's, and I've used tri-band phone in europe and the us since late 90's; no problems at all.
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
I got an old Motorola Timeport P7389 that is unlocked and a new Nokia 6600 which is also unlocked. They work well across networks, I travel to the Philippines, Belgium, US and Canada and I just get a prepaid SIM card whenever I change locations. I avoid international roaming for security purposes especially the Philippines where crime is rampant.
You can get your phone unlocked at a lot of places here in Toronto, you should be able to get your phone unlocked if you live at any urban place as well. If you are lucky to have a Nokia you can get a DCT4 calculator (googled "free DCT4 calculator") and unlock the phone yourself, I've done that with my Nokia 6600 and my mom's Nokia 6610 as well.
My parents get international roaming on their Sim cards when they come to Canada (safe place as it is) and use their existing cell phones (all Nokia world phones) from the Philippines, works pretty well.
Archie - CIO-for-hire
Can you get a temporary or prepaid SIM with a local carrier and just swap it or are the US carriers 'service locking' phones so you have to do international roaming with them even in foreign countries?
Yes
We chose the Motorola V66 phones because of their triband functionality.
After activating the TMobile Worldclass service (free to activate) I have traveled to Europe without a problem. I switch to the local band, and I'm on in most cases. Only once have I had to call local customer service.
There is a list available online. I do know that my triband does NOT work in Japan. But you can actually rent a phone from Tmobile if needs be. Since you mentioned Japan as a destination, this might present a problem for you.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
I travel (not as frequently as I would like) to Europe and have lately been taking a Motorola P7389 tri-band GSM phone on my travels. The phone, while not the latest model, works great. I purchased it, unlocked, on eBay for short money.
On my latest trip, I purchased a Vodaphone NL from the cell phone kiosk at Schipol airport (the Netherlands) for about 20 Euro. It came with a number that is good for at least a year, and included 5 euros of credit. To top up the service, I only had to go to any of a number of outlets wherever I was in Holland, or if I could read and write Nederlands a little better, could refill the service from the internet site. Oh yes; all incoming calls (including international ones) were free. The in-country rate was less than I pay for my contracted Alltel phone here in the states.
I had the same experience in Greece and Beligum with different carriers.
I like the GSM system because it doesn't because of the flexibility it offers. If my phone dies, I can simply remove the SIM card from it and put it in another phone. I haven't verified this, but heard while I was in Europe that the EU has mandated that all phones sold in EU countries are requried to be unlocked.
GSM is a standard throughout the world (except for the US, Iraq, Afganistan and I believe, Argentina). An excellent site for finding out about prepaid GSM services is http://www.prepaidgsm.net/,
Don't be fooled by "word phones" offered by various US carriers. These phones are locked tri-band phones that roam on European GSM networks, but which are charged at outrageous rates by the US company.
wherever I go, there I am.
Phones that are advertised as "world" that are sold by Cingular are not locked. That means you can take your Cingular SIMM out and put other provider's SIMM in and use your phone.
Sony Ericsson T616 is tri-band, Motorola v400 is quad-band which means you'll have coverage everywhere.
Otherwise, you may need to beg your wireless provider to unlock their phone (which some may do once you are a long-time customer) or find someone who can do it for you (usually for a small fee).
In some places, it easy to get hold os a pay as you go SIM. However, with the usual crap about terrorism/drug dealers/insert bogeyman of choice, it is very difficult in many countries to buy a SIM card without having proof of legal residence in the country where you are visiting. For someone coming from the US to say, Germany and living out of a hotel, this would not be possible. The workaround is to ask the host organisation to organise a SIM in their name. Not possible for tourists but businessmen can try this one. I believe that the UK will still allow you to buy a pay as you go SIM without a postal address.
See my journal, I write things there
Lovely, but it doesn't work on a Nokia 3360.
Why do you want pre-paid for a few weeks? I'm sure it makes sense, for some, but why? Personally I'd tell my friends to only call in emergency's, and use my Tmobile sim over there. Sure you pay roaming, way to much, but you also get one number that you can give everyone, and can always be reached in emergencies. Use the hotel phone.
If you really will make a lot of calls over there, to others over there, pick up a prepaid phone there, they are cheap enough.
BTW, while you are at it, call your carrier and complain that roaming in Europe is so high. It is all accounting, they can do whatever they want (Okay, I know those undersea cables cost money) with the billing. And get your friends in Europe to complain too. Perhaps someday we can do something about it.
Both GSM and CDMA are useless in Japan. NTT Docomo uses a different proprietary protocol.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Another great thing about T-Mobile is that they have the geekiest add-on service of any mobile phone company. All you can eat GPRS data transfer is $20 extra per month. So is all you can eat 802.11b Hot Spot service. Of course getting both will set you back $40 extra per month. And you have to have a $30/month or more phone plan to get the deal on GPRS. My $20/month econo plan doesn't count. However, it's sufficient for the $20 a.y.c.e Hot Spot deal.
Oh yeah...phone sound quality and coverage rocks here in Los Angeles. Of course, they are using the same network as Cingular here, so Cingular users can probably say "Oh yeah? Mine's just as good." Cingular doesn't have the geeky propellerhead extra goodness, though. ^_^
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
In order to use your gsm sim in Japan you need a 3g w-cdma handset, some include support for european gsm 900 & 1800 such as the nokia 6650 but I haven't seen one that works in the US as well... T-Mobile and probably other us carriers have roaming agreements with J-Phone and some J-Phone handsets will accept your sim card.
On a related note... I was shopping for new phones recently and had two sales people tell me that an unlocked phone will lead to more roaming charges since it will auto-switch over to another provider's network if the signal is better. Is there any truth to this?
Ouch! The truth hurts!
T-Mob's phone are locked so that you can't put another company's SIM card in the phone, but you can find sites on the internet with instructions to unlock phones (I leave locating the sites as an exercise for the reader) . . . or many third party phone shops will do it for you, but they can charge as much as $30-$40. I unlocked my phone the day I got it and I never had any problems with the phone accidentally connecting to another GSM network while I was the standard area of my calling plan (as someone else on /. said may happen with an unlocked phone). However, I suppose if this should happen it should be EZ to correct because when I'm roaming, the phone allows me to scan for other networks and select the one that I want to connect to (I suppose I could reconnect to my home network if this ever happened).
Note that changing SIM cards changes your phone number. I use my phone for business so I can't afford be swapping numbers (unless I'm on vacation or something like that) . . . but normally, I hangup and call immediately on a landline to save on the expensive (USD$1 - $2) overseas roaming fees. I also really dig being able to get/send text messages on the phone . . . however, As a US T-Mobile customer, I have had significant difficulty getting and sending text msgs to/from people using European mobile phone providers. This happens even if I'm in the same country and roaming on the same service. Though you may be considering buying a phone in your destination country and chucking it later, that's a lot of money (if you get a nice phone, the cost of 2 nice phone can easily exceed a triband and when you include chargers, that can be a lot of extra junk to carry around while traveling.)
Note that GSM phones do NOT work in Japan (they have their own standard. You can get a Japan friendly phone that also supports GSM tri-band (So that it will work inside and outside of Japan, but I think it's hard to find these phones outside of Japan).
Also, from my experience, all of the the GSM phones from ATT have SIM cards that you can swap freely (if the phone is unlocked). Most U.S. carriers' phones have removable SIM cards (except some legacy types, those aren't world phones anyway...).
Before anybody tells you different, if you buy a World Phone with a contract from Cingular (Ericsson T616, Motorola V400) they are now UNLOCKED so you can use a sim card from any GSM provider directly.
Cool, huh?