Adding data plan to unlocked European GSM Phone for use in US

[Rich Fray]

Hi - first post. Searched and couldn't find info on this.

I'm new to the cell phone business and just started working at an AT&T COR store. Girl comes in with a Swedish GSM smartphone. She's an exchange student and will be in the US for a year. I pop a new SIM card in it and the phone seems to be unlocked. We add her line to her sponsoring family's family talk plan. I tried to add a data package but the phone won't connect to the internet. My co-workers didn't seem that interested in helping me go any extra mile to make it work. I feel like there should be a way to make it work.

Any tips on what I could or should have tried? I ended up taking the data plan back off, which leaves her being able to talk and text, but only use internet on her sponsor's wifi.

Thanks

[veriztd]

You will need to manually configure the data settings in the phone. Merely activating the phone on the network will not always change those settings. What phone make/model ??

[cloudstrife1ph]

Some has auto configure option but others don't. yeah, you need to manually put it.

Just search the apn/wap setting whatever in the net for at&t. there might be a sticky in this site somewhere as there's one for t-mo...

If you still have no clue, might as well post the brand and model for us to have an idea...

[Rich Fray]

Thanks for both responses. I mostly wanted to know for the future if something like that occurs again. I'll do some reading up on APN/WAP settings so I'm a little smarter next time. Thanks!