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- 03-13-2007, 12:07 PM #1GregGuest
I'm confused. Hopefully someone has an answer or can point me to a
source. Every year our family takes a winter break in St. Thomas. The
last couple of years I had no problem getting good cell service. This
year I struggled. The earlier years I had a Nokia 6340. this year I
have a Sony Erickson W300i. One of the capabilities I made sure of
before upgrading my phone was that it was a full quad band unit.
Supposedly the SE is.
What happened to me was that even though my phone showed a full 5 bars of
signal strength, it displayed "No Network Service" except when first
powered on. If I cycled the phone on and off, it came up with Cingular
service and let me make a call. If I waited a couple of minutes, it
reverted to no network again. This was very frustrating. Anyone know
what was going wrong? Is my phone bad? It works just as fine now that
I'm back home as it did before I left.
Thanks.
› See More: Service in St. Thomas
- 03-13-2007, 01:00 PM #2SMSGuest
Re: Service in St. Thomas
Greg wrote:
> I'm confused. Hopefully someone has an answer or can point me to a
> source. Every year our family takes a winter break in St. Thomas. The
> last couple of years I had no problem getting good cell service. This
> year I struggled. The earlier years I had a Nokia 6340. this year I
> have a Sony Erickson W300i. One of the capabilities I made sure of
> before upgrading my phone was that it was a full quad band unit.
> Supposedly the SE is.
When you had the 6340, which was a GAIT phone, are you sure you were
always on GSM rather than TDMA or AMPS? That is probably the reason for
the reduced performance.
Even if it were GSM on the 6340, Nokia handsets have much better RF
performance than Sony-Ericsson phones.
CDMA coverage on St. Thomas is very good, so next time maybe bring along
a prepaid CDMA phone, though I'm not sure that prepaid will work there.
My kid's prepaid PagePlus CDMA phones couldn't make calls in Canada.
- 03-13-2007, 02:23 PM #3SMSGuest
Re: Service in St. Thomas
Greg wrote:
> I'm confused. Hopefully someone has an answer or can point me to a
> source. Every year our family takes a winter break in St. Thomas. The
> last couple of years I had no problem getting good cell service. This
> year I struggled. The earlier years I had a Nokia 6340. this year I
> have a Sony Erickson W300i. One of the capabilities I made sure of
> before upgrading my phone was that it was a full quad band unit.
> Supposedly the SE is.
(sorry, I forgot to copy my earlier reply to alt.cellular.attws)
When you had the 6340, which was a GAIT phone, are you sure you were
always on GSM rather than TDMA or AMPS? That is probably the reason for
the reduced performance with the new phone--you can't use the older
networks, which often provide better coverage.
Even if it were GSM that you were using on the 6340, Nokia handsets have
much better RF performance than Sony-Ericsson phones.
CDMA coverage on St. Thomas is very good, so next time maybe bring along
a prepaid CDMA phone, though I'm not sure that prepaid will work there.
My kid's prepaid PagePlus CDMA phones couldn't make calls in Canada.
[Copied to alt.cellular.attws. Please post all alt.cellular.cingular
posts to alt.cellular.attws as well. The Cingular name is going away,
and alt.cellular.attws is the proper venue for posts regarding AT&T's
Wireless Service.]
- 03-13-2007, 06:48 PM #4SMSGuest
Re: Service in St. Thomas
Dennis Ferguson wrote:
> If none of this seems right, however, then never mind.
>
> Dennis Ferguson
I bet that his GAIT 6340 was connecting to an AMPS network, and that he
didn't realize it. The GSM coverage on St. Thomas is not good, and they
probably have an old AMPS network. I think most people never look to see
which network they're on. I always check when I'm away from home to see
if I'm likely to be charged roaming, but most people probably pay no
attention.
- 03-14-2007, 11:13 AM #5GregGuest
Re: Service in St. Thomas
Dennis Ferguson <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
> On 2007-03-13, Greg <[email protected]> wrote:
>> .................. <snip>
>> have a Sony Erickson W300i. One of the capabilities I made sure of
>> before upgrading my phone was that it was a full quad band unit.
>> Supposedly the SE is.
>>
>> What happened to me was that even though my phone showed a full 5
>> bars of signal strength, it displayed "No Network Service" except
>> when first powered on. If I cycled the phone on and off, it came up
>> with Cingular service and let me make a call.
>> .................. <snip>
>
> I'll make a huge guess that could be entirely out to lunch. Was the
> place where you were spending time near Red Hook, or at least at the
> eastern end of the island, maybe on the north coast? And do you not
> have international roaming enabled on your account?
>
> .................. <snip>
>
> If any of this sounds familiar to you then my guess (grasping at
> straws) would be that you might be seeing this other network now
> because of your quad-band phone, and that your phone is somehow
> sticking with this strong network that it couldn't get service from
> rather than searching for the weak Cingular home network. This
> behaviour is kind of broken, though I know it is approximately what
> CDMA phones do when they go into E911 mode so it might not be entirely
> inexplicable.
>
> If none of this seems right, however, then never mind.
>
> Dennis Ferguson
You may be onto something, but not the location. I was in the south
central part of the island - Charlotte Amalie. I do not have
International Roaming on my account. It sure seemed like the scenario
you were describing, however. I was getting a full strength signal from
someone, just not Cingular. When I cycled the phone and it came back as
Cingular the strength was 2-3 bars. When it reverted to 'no network' it
jumped to full.
I had also thought about the GAIT issue, but with discounted it since my
SE was showing such high strength of something. I'm not technical enough
to know for sure, but I would have thought that my GSM phone would not
even know a TDMA signal existed. My 6340 didn't really tell me when it
was in GSM, TDMA, or AMPS mode so I wouldn't have known if it was
switching. I do know that I had no trouble making or receiving calls and
didn't have any extra charges (roaming or otherwise) on my bill after
returning home.
I'm betting that you may be right on and that BVI provider is the
culprit. Is there any way to set my phone to pick up and stick with a
Cingular signal regardless of its strength instead of jumping to a
stronger but not supported network? I would have thought this was
standard behavior.
- 03-15-2007, 11:31 PM #6SMSGuest
Re: Service in St. Thomas
[Sorry I meant 1800 MHz, not 1900 MHz. Also forgot to copy to
alt.cellular.attws as we're supposed to be doing.]
Greg wrote:
> I had also thought about the GAIT issue, but with discounted it since
my SE was showing such high strength of something.
You'll often see a good signal that you can't use with both GSM and CDMA
if there is no roaming agreement with whoever the signal belongs to.
The reason I would think that GAIT had something to do with it with the
6340 is because it's likely that any AMPS service there belonged to
either Cingular (AT&T) or Verizon, and the Cingular AMPS would be fair
game for non-roaming service (and perhaps the Verizon AMPS as well).
> I'm not technical enough to know for sure, but I would have thought
that my GSM phone would not even know a TDMA signal existed.
I think it's a mistake to believe that the GSM signal that your SE phone
picked up was the same signal that the GAIT phone was actually using in
the past.
Remember that the 6340 would not pick up a 900 MHz or 1800 MHz GSM
signal, but the SE will. There are too many variables here to be sure of
anything, but the whole reason for the GAIT phones was to be able to use
the more extensive AMPS and TDMA networks while the GSM network was
being built out.
> My 6340 didn't really tell me when it was in GSM, TDMA, or AMPS mode
so I wouldn't have known if it was switching. I do know that I had no
trouble making or receiving calls and didn't have any extra charges
(roaming or otherwise) on my bill after returning home.
Because you were probably not roaming, you were probably on AT&T's AMPS
network, if it existed there. There also may have been a roaming
agreement with the other AMPS network. Last time I roamed onto the
Cingular/AT&T AMPS network on my Verizon handset I was not charged
roaming, and I assume that this is because Verizon once had a roaming
agreement with AT&T Wireless for AMPS.
Maybe you could use the 6340 on your trips to St. Thomas, and the SE at
other times.
[Copied to alt.cellular.attws. Please post all alt.cellular.cingular
posts to alt.cellular.attws as well. The Cingular name is going away,
and alt.cellular.attws is the proper venue for posts regarding AT&T's
Wireless Service.]
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