vB Easy Archive - 8125 Huge international roaming problem.

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8125 Huge international roaming problem.
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Posted by: driven01

Ok, this has now happened to me on two trips that I've tried it on so it's a huge problem.

If I turn on my 8125 in another country (so far, Japan, Thailand and now England.) my phone will never pull an account. It just goes into "Searching" mode.

If I pull the SIM card and drop it into my Sony-Ericcson W900i then it works fine so the problem is not with the Cingular account, it's with the phone.

I *thought* this phone was a quad-band phone with International Roaming ability. If I can't have this feature I might as well have a CDMA phone.

Any thoughts? With all the problems I've been having with this 8125 this may be the camel that breaks the straws back and causes me to dump it.

Any help that anyone can offer would be most appreciative. (I'm data-stranded at the moment).

Posted by: CeluGeek

There is no GSM service in Japan, AFAIK.

Posted by: driven01

My w900i quad band worked fine there, as it does here in the UK.
Edit: Typo.

Posted by: driven01

Actually the w900i has UMTS, which MIGHT explain the Japan problem.

But WHY does this phone (8125) not work in the UK?

Posted by: Buck Wheat

In the UK have you tried to manually register it on a network? IIRC it's Vodafone UK that the roaming agreement is with though mostly over there I'm on an Orange account from Amsterdam or a Vodafone account from Berlin. I just got an 8125 over the weekend specifically because we spend so much time over there. Before I unlock it I'll see if your situation resolves so I can take it back and get something else.

Posted by: driven01

I'll give it a try. How do I manually register it on the network?

Posted by: bodeh6

What kind of SIM you running?

Posted by: Buck Wheat

As bohdeh says, you'll need a newer sim but if your handy worked in the US it could be a config issue, or the handy could be broken on the Euro bands.

To manually set the network go to Start menu, Settings - Phone - Network and there should be a list of the available networks. The Cingular site says all the big carriers in the UK will roam with Cingular. I've roamed on Vodafone over there but you might want to try each one.

Posted by: bodeh6

Quote:

Originally Posted by driven01

Actually the w900i has UMTS, which MIGHT explain the Japan problem.

But WHY does this phone (8125) not work in the UK?

Actually the no UMTS in the HTC is exactly why it won't work in Japan. No GSM over there but there is a strong UMTS network on 2100 only.

Posted by: driven01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buck Wheat

As bohdeh says, you'll need a newer sim but if your handy worked in the US it could be a config issue, or the handy could be broken on the Euro bands.

To manually set the network go to Start menu, Settings - Phone - Network and there should be a list of the available networks. The Cingular site says all the big carriers in the UK will roam with Cingular. I've roamed on Vodafone over there but you might want to try each one.

Much better ... at least now I can see each of the carriers so that tells me that the phone's radio is working correctly on all bands.

Unfortunately it also tells me "unable to register" on each network. My w900i registered itself on Orange, but the 8125 can't. I tried all four carriers that came up.

Any other ideas?

To respond to the SIM question, these two SIMs that I have are both the newer 64k Cingular SIMs.

Posted by: bartolo5

Quote:

Originally Posted by driven01

Seems like you don't have international service enabled in your accout. Call Cingular so they can do something about it or simply get a prepaid card wherever you go.. (not in Japan because they dont have GSM there).

Posted by: driven01

Quote:

Originally Posted by bartolo5

But why does the SIM card then work in a different phone?

Posted by: driven01

Got it fixed ... it wasn't the SIM card ... apparently Cingular had to do something on the back end to force the device to accept a network from a different country. The way it was explained to me is that sometimes the device gets "stuck" in the last country it was in.

I don't fully understand the problem, but it's working now quite well.

Thanks again for the responses.

Posted by: rmo5354

driven01, may I ask which division of Cingular did you talk to you to get your 8125 to work with carriers in the UK. I have an unlocked 8125 that I am sending to someone in the UK. They will get a SIM from their local wireless carrier and put it in the device. I wanna make sure that is the only thing they'll need to do coz they're not exactly tech savvy.