Mobile phone international roaming

[Roger]

Hi all,
I am travelling to the USA & Canada (Montreal) later this year. I am about to change phones and require one that will work in both of the above places. I usually prefer a Nokia phone ang generally my provider is Telstra. I understand that a Tri Band (GSM) phone is required.
Any advice would be most appreciated.....

Roger

 

[straitman]

Hi all,
I am travelling to the USA & Canada (Montreal) later this year. I am about to change phones and require one that will work in both of the above places. I usually prefer a Nokia phone ang generally my provider is Telstra. I understand that a Tri Band (GSM) phone is required.
Any advice would be most appreciated.....

Roger

Roger,

I have successfully used a Motorola Tri band flip phone (forgotten the model) with Telstra as the provider.

I believe most 3G phone would be OK. My Nokia N95 works fine in NZ and I'm told it will work OK in the USA.

Hope that helps.

 

[munitalP]

I have a HTC slide phone PDA 3G thing, it seems to work everywhere I go...

I had a problem the other day in HKG though, phone worked fine day one, then Telstra (unexplained) call banned me. PA spoke with Telsra and they unsucessfully tried to remove it - didn't work. No outgoing calls or TXT however, the internet and email still worked!

I had to use my laptop WiFi sim card to make calls...

The ban came off as I re-entered Australia on Thursday AM.... very frustrating...

If you ring Telstra Roaming, give them your phone model, they will tell you if the phone works at the destination of your choice - I did this with a previous Samsung phone I had...

Mr!

 

[Evan]

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I had a problem the other day in HKG though, phone worked fine day one, then Telstra (unexplained) call banned me. PA spoke with Telsra and they unsucessfully tried to remove it - didn't work. No outgoing calls or TXT however, the internet and email still worked!
<..>

Funny i had this happen to my Singtel phone in HKG recently (work provided in SIN) very very annoying !!! Anyway my Optus one worked fine from AU.
E

 

[coco50]

Hi all,
I am travelling to the USA & Canada (Montreal) later this year. I am about to change phones and require one that will work in both of the above places. I usually prefer a Nokia phone ang generally my provider is Telstra. I understand that a Tri Band (GSM) phone is required.
Any advice would be most appreciated.....

Roger

My wife and I went to Europe and the US last year and, yes, in the US you definitely need a Tri Band phone. We bought two Samsung SGH-L760 Sliders and they never missed a beat

 

[coco50]

The Samsungs also worked well in Asia.

 

[dot]

As others have said already - to work in the LOTFAP you need a tri or quad band phone so that the phone is capable of using the frequencies they use in North America and the frequencies in the rest of the (GSM) world.

If you also need to travel to Japan or Sth Korea, your phone will need to be a 3G phone (most of which are also tri band handsets as well)

 

[Roger]

Thanks for your posts. I will start investigating....

Roger

 

[moa999]

To be specific.
Australia GSM is 900 / 1800 MHz
US GSM is 850 MHz / 1900 MHz - moreso 850
so ideally you want a quad-band GSM phone that covers all four frequencies....

or given you are buying a new phone it is probably worthwhile investing in a 3G model.
Australia 3G is 2100 MHz in the cities with nextG on 850 MHz and Opt/Vod considering 900 Mhz regional network
US 3G is 850 / 1900 MHz (AT&T) and 1700 / 2100 MHz (T-Mobile)

 

[ozimax]

When I visit the USA (14th trip next month coming up) I just pop into Walmart, pick up a prepaid phone for $30 (USD). This usually includes a brand new Nokia phone plus 300 minutes of credit. Can't beat that deal. They may be cheaper again this year.

I still keep my iphone on, but I divert voice calls to my home phone, and only accept SMS while roaming. This cuts cost down substantially.

Just my two bob's worth.

Ozi.

 

[rogerroger]

Yep, watch out for iPhones when roaming. I know of someone who copped a $17,000 bill after three weeks (he foolishly downloaded movies...)

 

[ozimax]

Yep, watch out for iPhones when roaming. I know of someone who copped a $17,000 bill after three weeks (he foolishly downloaded movies...)

Ouch! That's not good.

 

[drewbles]

Or if anyone wants more info, I work for a company that does pre-paid SIM Cards for the US and indeed global (One SIM card, 2 numbers and you get the bonus of coverage on AT&T and T-Mobile in the states on GSM).

Won't spam which company but if people are interested, drop me a line

(I make no cash out of this, i'm one of the network guys that keeps things running, but as I use it for travelling i'm all in favour of suggesting it to AFF members).

Mods, if this isn't suitable, please let me know. Don't want to be known as a spammer

 

[codash1099]

For info, I had no trouble with my Nokia 6120 in the US, Canada, the UK and Hong Kong.

 

[Duckie92]

Rangeroamer is probably the provider your looking for. You can use your current phone or buy a phone from them. They are fairly cheap as well. They cover almost every country in the world, so they are bound to have whichever country your traveling to. Hopefully this helps.

If you wanna know more, google rangeroamer and you'll find the site.

 

[Cyclogenesis]

Hmm.. does not seem to do 3G (my e71 is not listed)

 

[notzac]

Or if anyone wants more info, I work for a company that does pre-paid SIM Cards for the US and indeed global (One SIM card, 2 numbers and you get the bonus of coverage on AT&T and T-Mobile in the states on GSM)...

...which I'm using currently. Aside from the lack of data and the weirdness of how outbound calls work on an iPhone, the call costs have been stunningly cheap!

Realistically, roaming data isn't a problem - I'd rather not have it, to avoid running up a bill of astronomical proportions - WiFi is available for much cheaper/free in most civilised locales.

 

[drewbles]

...which I'm using currently. Aside from the lack of data and the weirdness of how outbound calls work on an iPhone, the call costs have been stunningly cheap!

Realistically, roaming data isn't a problem - I'd rather not have it, to avoid running up a bill of astronomical proportions - WiFi is available for much cheaper/free in most civilised locales.

If you had needed data in the USA, you could have used the 1+PIN and used the global profile for data, but it would have been stupidly expensive. That's just roaming data for you (outside the EU). As you've probably seen, your EU data you used was not so bad Around $1/mb which is pretty decent!

 

[Beulah]

Incredible scene