ST roaming on TMO / ATT

[efparri]

As I stated repeatedly in other threads, an AT&T-based telephone will not roam where there is AT&T service regardless of the quality of that service. T-Mobile-based phones will not roam where there is T-Mobile service, good or bad. On the other hand, a T-Mobile phone may roam where there is only AT&T service and vice versa.
http://www.howardforums.com/showthre...bout-*ROAMING*

[markjs]

Except you're not listening to what I'm saying or maybe I'm not explaining clearly. My own experience is that my AT&T phones would automatically roam if need be, where my friend's T-Mobile phones had to be manually set to enable the roaming. I think it has to do with licensing since T-Mobile is the smaller network and has to take what it can get.

When it comes to Straight Talk I don't trust them to do anything but have a vague understanding of their own service and they always seem to live up to it. In actual practice I cannot roam on AT&T towers when I am out of T-Mobile's service area with a Tracfone. I'd bet it is the same with a T-Mobile SIM in a Straight Talk phone. This is why they are FedEx'ing me a new AT&T based SIM. If it would actually roam, I'd have service but it doesn't.

[clockcycle]

Except you're not listening to what I'm saying or maybe I'm not explaining clearly. My own experience is that my AT&T phones would automatically roam if need be, where my friend's T-Mobile phones had to be manually set to enable the roaming. I think it has to do with licensing since T-Mobile is the smaller network and has to take what it can get.

When it comes to Straight Talk I don't trust them to do anything but have a vague understanding of their own service and they always seem to live up to it. In actual practice I cannot roam on AT&T towers when I am out of T-Mobile's service area with a Tracfone. I'd bet it is the same with a T-Mobile SIM in a Straight Talk phone. This is why they are FedEx'ing me a new AT&T based SIM. If it would actually roam, I'd have service but it doesn't.

I tend to switch between something and the other automatically, since I at the boarder of two cities and must be between two towers as well. I'll drop to 1 bar, then nothing, then 3-4 bars and data won't work. Then back again, drains the battery, makes the phone warmer. It seems to happen with every provider/carrier I have had and used in the same place. If I go into the woods mountain biking I sometimes lose service and ofc my AT&T will not roam on T-mobile, because neither has a signal in that "dead" spot. It happens with Sprint, Simple Mobile, T-mobile and MetroPCS, in the same area. YMMV

Either way, it always says "HOME".

[efparri]

Except you're not listening to what I'm saying or maybe I'm not explaining clearly. My own experience is that my AT&T phones would automatically roam if need be, where my friend's T-Mobile phones had to be manually set to enable the roaming. I think it has to do with licensing since T-Mobile is the smaller network and has to take what it can get.

When it comes to Straight Talk I don't trust them to do anything but have a vague understanding of their own service and they always seem to live up to it. In actual practice I cannot roam on AT&T towers when I am out of T-Mobile's service area with a Tracfone. I'd bet it is the same with a T-Mobile SIM in a Straight Talk phone. This is why they are FedEx'ing me a new AT&T based SIM. If it would actually roam, I'd have service but it doesn't.

You said no such thing in your previous reply.

I think you guys are wrong. My experience of late suggests that a ST T-Mobile SIM will not roam on AT&T towers at all. I know people who have actual T-Mobile postpaid can only do it by changing a default setting in their phone to allow it because T-Mobile has worse coverage where I live by far and I've showed many people that trick. They go from having barely adequate call coverage to good coverage.

I also recently got a Tracfone with a T-Mobile SIM (I already have an E71 SIM swap phone) ; it gets coverage only where T-Mobile signal is available. There is no setting to allow it to pick up anything but the towers it defaults to. It will often show 3 bars, same as the phone with the AT&T SIM yet the screen reads "No Service" and it will not allow calls ort texts. Then if you go outside where the other phone jumps up to 5 bars (and where I know T-Mobile signal is weak) it will go back down to 1 bar but will show "Home" and will then be able to make calls. I am almost positive at least with the 2G phones if you have a T-Mobile SIM you only can use T-Mobile towers.

[Endeavor]

You may not be aware of this, but whether you are allowed to roam onto other networks is configured both by the provisioning of the SIM and by the phone.

So, even if ST allows Tmo SIM to roam on AT&T (or the other way around), if your phone is set to "Home Only," you won't roam. ST obviously has no control over which phone you happen to choose or how you configure it.

If you buy a carrier independent phone, it will likely come with default to "Home Only," but allow you to change it to allowing roaming (with a warning that you may incur roaming charges) and sometimes even ROAM ONLY.

However, if you bought an AT&T phone or a Tmobile phone, they often locked that feature to HOME ONLY in the phone's firmware and removed the ability to change it completely.

So, before you decide whether ST allows Tmobile to roam on AT&T or vice versa, make sure that you have a phone that hsa the option visible, and that it is set to allow roaming. And if you are going to tell us that you could or could not roam, make sure that you tell us that you had the phone set to allow roaming! Otherwise, we're going to assume that you aren't aware of the feature and haven't changed it from "Home Only." Even better yet, if you have it, select the option that FORCES roaming, and see if it works.

I think you guys are wrong. My experience of late suggests that a ST T-Mobile SIM will not roam on AT&T towers at all. I know people who have actual T-Mobile postpaid can only do it by changing a default setting in their phone to allow it because T-Mobile has worse coverage where I live by far and I've showed many people that trick. They go from having barely adequate call coverage to good coverage.

I also recently got a Tracfone with a T-Mobile SIM (I already have an E71 SIM swap phone) ; it gets coverage only where T-Mobile signal is available. There is no setting to allow it to pick up anything but the towers it defaults to. It will often show 3 bars, same as the phone with the AT&T SIM yet the screen reads "No Service" and it will not allow calls ort texts. Then if you go outside where the other phone jumps up to 5 bars (and where I know T-Mobile signal is weak) it will go back down to 1 bar but will show "Home" and will then be able to make calls. I am almost positive at least with the 2G phones if you have a T-Mobile SIM you only can use T-Mobile towers.

[franquis]

You may not be aware of this, but whether you are allowed to roam onto other networks is configured both by the provisioning of the SIM and by the phone.

So, even if ST allows Tmo SIM to roam on AT&T (or the other way around), if your phone is set to "Home Only," you won't roam. ST obviously has no control over which phone you happen to choose or how you configure it.

If you buy a carrier independent phone, it will likely come with default to "Home Only," but allow you to change it to allowing roaming (with a warning that you may incur roaming charges) and sometimes even ROAM ONLY.

However, if you bought an AT&T phone or a Tmobile phone, they often locked that feature to HOME ONLY in the phone's firmware and removed the ability to change it completely.

So, before you decide whether ST allows Tmobile to roam on AT&T or vice versa, make sure that you have a phone that hsa the option visible, and that it is set to allow roaming. And if you are going to tell us that you could or could not roam, make sure that you tell us that you had the phone set to allow roaming! Otherwise, we're going to assume that you aren't aware of the feature and haven't changed it from "Home Only." Even better yet, if you have it, select the option that FORCES roaming, and see if it works.

Thanks for your comments, they are very helpful. How would you decide which sim card to order from ST if your phone is unlocked and you could use either TMo or ATT? Does this depend on where you live? Also how do you set your phone to pick a network or to roam? I have the Exhibit II 4G and I'm using it with the TMo $30 5G/100 min. I love the data allowance but the minutes are just not enough, so I'm thinking of going to ST or Simple Mobile, but I've read too many complaints here about SM

[Sigmund Floyd]

Okay, feel free to smack me if this is a dumb question..

How do you tell if your sim card is T-Mobile or AT&T?

I currently switched from Veri$on to a t401g.. At one time the browser home page says "Powered by T-Mobile" ((no longer says that)) But I have noticed that the service of the phone is not as good as AT&T.. It seems more like T-Mobile atm.

[poki]

Att sim is blue and T-Mobile sim is pink

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using HowardForums

[ron6400]

That how the ST- TMO Sim looks like

Okay, feel free to smack me if this is a dumb question..

How do you tell if your sim card is T-Mobile or AT&T?

I currently switched from Veri$on to a t401g.. At one time the browser home page says "Powered by T-Mobile" ((no longer says that)) But I have noticed that the service of the phone is not as good as AT&T.. It seems more like T-Mobile atm.

[Tracfancier]

That how the ST- TMO Sim looks like

When showing the SIM number, always show the first 6 digits, as they never vary.
T-Mobile = 890126
AT&T = 890141

[money69]

It looks based upon their terms and conditions that data doesn't work but that you get the postpaid coverage of voice and text with data just on the carriers native network. Has anyone roamed voice and text on an ATT sim?

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

[Haas_Dave]

It looks based upon their terms and conditions that data doesn't work but that you get the postpaid coverage of voice and text with data just on the carriers native network. Has anyone roamed voice and text on an ATT sim?

I've roamed on Chinook/MTPCS/CellularOne, T-Mobile, and Verizon's GSM roamer network using an E71 (AT&T-homed) SIM in the last 3 months, including through TX back a couple weeks ago. This was while SIM swapped between two non-Nokia phones and during a billing cycle so it wasn't device specific.
And in almost every case I've roamed with data capabilities available, even though the T&Cs say otherwise.

So you should have at least talk & text (and some data) roaming with a BOYD AT&T SIM.

[Rebel60]

Can you post the trick you use, so we can try it if we are not getting good coverage? Thanks

I think you guys are wrong. My experience of late suggests that a ST T-Mobile SIM will not roam on AT&T towers at all. I know people who have actual T-Mobile postpaid can only do it by changing a default setting in their phone to allow it because T-Mobile has worse coverage where I live by far and I've showed many people that trick. They go from having barely adequate call coverage to good coverage.

I also recently got a Tracfone with a T-Mobile SIM (I already have an E71 SIM swap phone) ; it gets coverage only where T-Mobile signal is available. There is no setting to allow it to pick up anything but the towers it defaults to. It will often show 3 bars, same as the phone with the AT&T SIM yet the screen reads "No Service" and it will not allow calls ort texts. Then if you go outside where the other phone jumps up to 5 bars (and where I know T-Mobile signal is weak) it will go back down to 1 bar but will show "Home" and will then be able to make calls. I am almost positive at least with the 2G phones if you have a T-Mobile SIM you only can use T-Mobile towers.

[ndtv88]

Can you post the trick you use, so we can try it if we are not getting good coverage? Thanks

ST/Tracfone has individual roaming agreements with regional GSm networks, as long as your phone is allowing roaming, you should be able to do roaming. the fact of wheteher you get data or not depends on the agreement that tracfone made with the local roaming network, with some it is voice and text only , with others it is voice text and data. Thre really is no trick involved. you CANT force your phone to roam as efparri stated earlier.
below are some maps that ST used to have:

- For AT&T, click on the link below, this the native coverage map, which means that the phone will have more coverage than this on ST, enter your actual address to see how the voice signal is, then see what data coverage(click on data above map) you have in your area. The last link is for the actual ST maps.
http://www.wireless.att.com/coverage...phone&opt=payg
- For TMobile, click on the link below, this the native coverage map, which means that the phone will have more coverage than this on ST, enter your actual address to see how the voice signal is, then see what data coverage(click on data coverage above map) you have in your area.
http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-coverage
- Verizon uses only the Straight talk branded phones, no BYOD allowed, no smartphones sold or allowed. This is native coverage which means NO roaming allowed for these phones.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/C...datacoverage4g
- Sprint is only for the 2 branded Android phones(samsung galaxy precedent and LG optimus Q) sold by Straight Talks and uses native sprint network only, ie NO roaming outside the network.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/check...phone-coverage
- The below is the ST map for all its networks, as you can see the maps are broader than ATT and TMo bcoz of roaming.

[Lyssis]

So if I don't have any service with T-mobile but the service for AT&T is great, am I better off getting an AT&T phone with the AT&T sim card from ST?