I'm writing this from a location that has T-Mobile and Cingular coverage in the US (not my carrier--I'm still on Verizon Wireless). I just installed three TravelSim cards for my little cheapie GSM phones that we use quite successfully in Europe and I have activated all three numbers online as per TravelSim instructions.

The two phones that I've used before with success in France and Ireland are Tri-Band: Panasonic EB-A102 GSM900/1800/1900. The "new" phone--a reconditioned one from Ebay--is a EB-GD55 Dual Band: 900/1800.

All three are detecting a TravelSim, but only one is detecting service--the one that's the Dual Band. (!) I'm totally puzzled. Should I therefore assume there's something wrong with the TravelSim? I do have an email into their Customer Support, but I was wondering if anyone else had had the same problem with a TravelSim or similar.

Well you can switch around the sim cards to see if it's the phone or the sim card.

Very very surprised you get service on the 900/1800 phone....the frequencies simply are not used in the USA...


As far as the other phones, do they automatically detect frequencies or do you have to set the frequency to 1900...also you can try to follow the instructions to manually choose your roaming partner.....

Duh! I should have tried switching the SIMs right away. I'll do that right now and let you know.

The Dual-Band thing was exactly what puzzled me, XYZ. Again, it shouldn't be detecting anything.

XYZ: It's the phone, not the SIM. I also had some success (limited) with manually setting the band. Thanks, as always, for being online. We all should start paying you.

Latest: One of the phones (the Tri-Band) just got a message from the company activating it. The other two are still iffy.