U.S. Cell phones that work in Europe
Apr 14th, 2005, 09:46 PM
#21
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Again to reiterate:
1. T mobile is the loosest US gsm carrier in terms of providing unlocking codes. I believe if you are a customer for 3 months and pay your bills they will provide the unlocking code for phones they sell you directly. Just make sure it is an international phone. The good thing about T mobile US international phones is they have both frequencies used in Europe 900 and 1800 as well as the US frequency they use 1900. Cingular gsm phones unless they are motorola quad bands, generally lack 900 as Cingular uses 850 in the US and hence has to provide phones with both 850 and 1900 leaving only one other frequency on its tri band models and that's 1800. Lots of discussion as to whether you absolutely have to have both 900 and 1800 (not absolutely but very helpful).
2. You can buy unlocked gsm phones with both 900 and 1800 at many web sites for about $80 for dual bands (a decent Nokia with 900 and 1800) and tri bands (generally 900,1800,1900) for starting at about $120 or $130 for a Nokia 3100 a cute little phone (no camera though).
3. Mobal phones, according to people who have recently bought them, arrive unlocked even though the web site claims the phones are locked. For what it's worth, Mobal uses O2 in the UK for its basic service and in essence they are providing an O2 service in the UK with free incoming in the UK. Their dual band phone runs $49 and the tri bands start at $99 which are good prices. Even if they arrive locked, they are Nokias and of all the models, Nokias are by far the easiest to unlock as the unlocking code calculator is freely available on the web. There are also sites that give out Nokia unlocking codes for free if you know the imei # (in effect the serial # of the phone) and the carrier to which it is locked.
Other manufacturers' unlocking codes are generally not available on the web and have to be unlocked physically using a cable something a little more difficult. As the previous poster points out and I have no reason to doubt her as I have not been to Germany recently, the availability of places that unlock phones varies by country. Certainly I know in London, if you walk up and down Oxford Street, you see store front after store front with large signs claiming they can unlock all phones for prices as low as £8.
Is unlocking illegal? No it is most emphatically not, you own the phone. Is it a violatin of a contract you may have with a carrier? It depends on the way you may interpret your contract; nobody says anything specifically about unlocking phones. I would find it hard to believe that they can enforce anything if you enter a code into a phone you own to make the phone operate the way it was intended before they deliberately sabotaged it; there are also several enlightened countries such as Findland which prohibit the companies from disaboling this good feature of GSM phones but that's the way it is.
As far as service issues. T mobile and Cingular both allow international roaming throughout Western Europe. It is not so much that their coverage is excellent, what happens is you roam on a local network. For example, if you have activated international roaming on T mobile, when you arrive in the UK and turn on the phone, it will try to find internally a network it can register on i.e. a network that your provider (T mobile US) has a roaming arrangement with. Surprise, surprise, while in the UK generally the mobile network T mobile US phones register on is T Mobile UK (I wonder why) but you can manually choose a different network. Not that it matters as the way international roaming is set up, you pay the same asininely high rates for service (99 cents;minute US to both make and receive calls timed to the minute so a 61 second call costs $1.98!). The big issue is receiving. The advantage to you, however, is you retain your US mobile phone number so that somebody ringing your US mobile phone will hear a European ring tone (sometimes a problem as the ring tone is different since you are on a foreign network) but the calls go through pretty quickly amazingly enough and reception is usually excellent as European mobile phone coverage is generally superior to that in the US (generally is the key word there).
OTOH you can buy a local sim package which in the UK is very cheap with no hassles involved if you use Virgin Mobile. Lots of threads here about how simple it is...simply take your US sim card out of the phone and put in the local sim card...takes about 10 seconds. Voila, your mobile now registers on the local network and you now have a local phone number. Your friends have to be told the local phone number and have to dial internationally. They will pay sonmewhat more to call an international mobile but you pay nothing to receive calls and you also have the ability to call for very little within the country you are in.
Whether it is worth it or not is up to your own sense of how important it is to be reachable 24/7 and how much you wish to use the service. Certainly there are cheaper alternatives for calling and if you're onlyusing the mobile for emergencies, it might not pay.
Lots of threads, like I said, regarding this.
1. T mobile is the loosest US gsm carrier in terms of providing unlocking codes. I believe if you are a customer for 3 months and pay your bills they will provide the unlocking code for phones they sell you directly. Just make sure it is an international phone. The good thing about T mobile US international phones is they have both frequencies used in Europe 900 and 1800 as well as the US frequency they use 1900. Cingular gsm phones unless they are motorola quad bands, generally lack 900 as Cingular uses 850 in the US and hence has to provide phones with both 850 and 1900 leaving only one other frequency on its tri band models and that's 1800. Lots of discussion as to whether you absolutely have to have both 900 and 1800 (not absolutely but very helpful).
2. You can buy unlocked gsm phones with both 900 and 1800 at many web sites for about $80 for dual bands (a decent Nokia with 900 and 1800) and tri bands (generally 900,1800,1900) for starting at about $120 or $130 for a Nokia 3100 a cute little phone (no camera though).
3. Mobal phones, according to people who have recently bought them, arrive unlocked even though the web site claims the phones are locked. For what it's worth, Mobal uses O2 in the UK for its basic service and in essence they are providing an O2 service in the UK with free incoming in the UK. Their dual band phone runs $49 and the tri bands start at $99 which are good prices. Even if they arrive locked, they are Nokias and of all the models, Nokias are by far the easiest to unlock as the unlocking code calculator is freely available on the web. There are also sites that give out Nokia unlocking codes for free if you know the imei # (in effect the serial # of the phone) and the carrier to which it is locked.
Other manufacturers' unlocking codes are generally not available on the web and have to be unlocked physically using a cable something a little more difficult. As the previous poster points out and I have no reason to doubt her as I have not been to Germany recently, the availability of places that unlock phones varies by country. Certainly I know in London, if you walk up and down Oxford Street, you see store front after store front with large signs claiming they can unlock all phones for prices as low as £8.
Is unlocking illegal? No it is most emphatically not, you own the phone. Is it a violatin of a contract you may have with a carrier? It depends on the way you may interpret your contract; nobody says anything specifically about unlocking phones. I would find it hard to believe that they can enforce anything if you enter a code into a phone you own to make the phone operate the way it was intended before they deliberately sabotaged it; there are also several enlightened countries such as Findland which prohibit the companies from disaboling this good feature of GSM phones but that's the way it is.
As far as service issues. T mobile and Cingular both allow international roaming throughout Western Europe. It is not so much that their coverage is excellent, what happens is you roam on a local network. For example, if you have activated international roaming on T mobile, when you arrive in the UK and turn on the phone, it will try to find internally a network it can register on i.e. a network that your provider (T mobile US) has a roaming arrangement with. Surprise, surprise, while in the UK generally the mobile network T mobile US phones register on is T Mobile UK (I wonder why) but you can manually choose a different network. Not that it matters as the way international roaming is set up, you pay the same asininely high rates for service (99 cents;minute US to both make and receive calls timed to the minute so a 61 second call costs $1.98!). The big issue is receiving. The advantage to you, however, is you retain your US mobile phone number so that somebody ringing your US mobile phone will hear a European ring tone (sometimes a problem as the ring tone is different since you are on a foreign network) but the calls go through pretty quickly amazingly enough and reception is usually excellent as European mobile phone coverage is generally superior to that in the US (generally is the key word there).
OTOH you can buy a local sim package which in the UK is very cheap with no hassles involved if you use Virgin Mobile. Lots of threads here about how simple it is...simply take your US sim card out of the phone and put in the local sim card...takes about 10 seconds. Voila, your mobile now registers on the local network and you now have a local phone number. Your friends have to be told the local phone number and have to dial internationally. They will pay sonmewhat more to call an international mobile but you pay nothing to receive calls and you also have the ability to call for very little within the country you are in.
Whether it is worth it or not is up to your own sense of how important it is to be reachable 24/7 and how much you wish to use the service. Certainly there are cheaper alternatives for calling and if you're onlyusing the mobile for emergencies, it might not pay.
Lots of threads, like I said, regarding this.
Apr 15th, 2005, 02:12 AM
#23
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I'm t-mobile -- I like having my own number when I am traveling.
I have used the phone is Western Europe, Former Yugoslavia, including Serbia and Southeat Asia [Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam]
The per minute charges range from $.99 to $2.99, but if you are using the phone only to stay in basic contact that's cool. It doesn't cost anyone from the US anything to call you because they are calling a US number.
I have used the phone is Western Europe, Former Yugoslavia, including Serbia and Southeat Asia [Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam]
The per minute charges range from $.99 to $2.99, but if you are using the phone only to stay in basic contact that's cool. It doesn't cost anyone from the US anything to call you because they are calling a US number.
