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- 03-13-2007, 02:23 PM #1SMSGuest
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.]
› See More: Service in St. Thomas
- 03-15-2007, 11:31 PM #2SMSGuest
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.
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and alt.cellular.attws is the proper venue for posts regarding AT&T's
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