Any way to lock the MDA to specific carriers while roaming?

[Flashfox]

I travel extensively overseas. Although I manually select my preferred roaming partner, I noticed that my MDA often locks on to another provider. I suspect that this is because it either momentarily lost the signal or the "other" provider's signal was much stronger.

What I would like to know is if it is possible for me to "lock" my phone to one or two providers?

Eaxmple: In Taipei, there are at least four T-Mobile roaming partners. Two offer GPRS while the others don't. (Taiwan seems to have skipped EDGE and went to 3G. So you either have GPRS, 3G or no data). When my phone "flips", it often winds up with a non-data provider. Hence, I am unable to exchange any data. I have to manually reselect my preferred carrier.

[grabiarz]

As far as I know the preffered carriers and their priority is encoded on the sim card, but then again I may be horribly wrong.

[mapleman321]

i know when i was in taiwan, i just did manual search for networks and then locked it in that way, which one were you connected to??

[Flashfox]

It would either lock onto Chungwa or Far East Tone (FET). However, FET does not support data (GPRS icon off). So as you do, I manually set the MDA to use Chungwa.

However, if at one point I lose Chungwa (dip in signal), it automatically seeks another signal, then switches and locks to FET... which happens to be the strongest at that point. This occured to me in Taipei and elsewhere on the island.

This is also why I want to "lock" my phone to a preferred carrier when required.

By the way, I had similar problems in Europe. However, as all T-mo partner nets where I travel support GPRS (and EDGE), I really didn't care. My issue with Taiwan stems from the fact that not all T-mo partners support GPRS data.

[mapleman321]

bummer, you heard that in taipai that got wifi everywhere now right? ma ai bwo is all about the connectivity, you should just get an account there and jack the wifi signals

[Flashfox]

I do "borrow" open WiFi connections wherever I can ;-)

However, there are times and places where I don't have any choice but to use T-Mo. I those cases, I have to revert to plain old GPRS. To their advantage, they seemed to have jumped over EDGE and went straight to 2.5G or 3G GSM. If I need to stay there several weeks, I do get a local SIM card (thanks to our local rep). However, if my stay is just for a week or so, then I use T-Mo roaming. As you know, the advantage of a "local" card is that all incoming calls are free ;-)