Now that AT&T has followed T-Mobile's example by screwing the pooch on my cell phone billing, and I've flung yet another SIM-locked Motorola V600 out the window of yet another moving vehicle, and am about to enter into another year long "you violated the agreement first" small claims battle, I need a new GSM provider. I'm going to buy an unlocked tri-band GSM this time. Anybody had notable (good or bad) billing and/or customer service experiences with Voicestream or any other GSM provider with native coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area? (If you reply privately to me, I'll summarize back to the list.) -- Paul Vixie
I've flung yet another SIM-locked Motorola V600 out the window of yet another moving vehicle
littering!!!!
am about to enter into another year long "you violated the agreement first" small claims battle
i guess we value our time differently
I'm going to buy an unlocked tri-band GSM this time.
strongly recommended. or, as here in fiji, one can get a phone unlocked for a few bucks (couple of guys on a bench in a street stall).
Anybody had notable (good or bad) billing and/or customer service experiences with Voicestream
voicestream is t-mobile. telephant stupidity and error rate are proportional to size. hence, coverage and intl roaming with clue and good billing are not likely. but at least some branch of t-mobile and at&t have something to do with the internet, though i doubt that makes this thread on topic. randy
On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 10:47:43AM +1200, Randy Bush wrote:
strongly recommended. or, as here in fiji, one can get a phone unlocked for a few bucks (couple of guys on a bench in a street stall).
Triband phones mostly operate on 900/1800/1900 frequencies. There is a major US deployment of GSM on the "cellular" GSM 850 band. So if you are with a triband phone on anyone other than Tmobile (which uses only 1900gsm in the US), you will not get adequately covered. You want either a US centric triband for use in the US with ATT/cingular that operates on GSM 850/1800/1900 and then get a world triband on GSM 900/1800/1900 and swap sims in and out (trivially easy to get most gsm phones unlocked), OR you want a quadband like the moto v600 or treo 600 GSM which operate on 850/900/1800/1900.
voicestream is t-mobile. telephant stupidity and error rate are proportional to size. hence, coverage and intl roaming with clue and good billing are not likely.
Verizon now has a worldphone that will roam onto vodafone GSM internationally. Their rates don't appear to be too prohibitive. Though if you are going to be calling a lot while abroad, I suggest picking up an unlocked nokia 6310i and prepaid sims as you fly into airports. Put up a web page with your current phone number of choice. Also note due to fraud mitigation, most phones only allow you to call within the country you are in or back to the home country, all the while charging you an exhorbitant price. If you _really_ need to be connected at all times, get a sat phone. Some mobile gsm roaming charges are more expensive than a globalstar. /vijay
Way off topic, hit delete now. On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 11:09:27PM +0000, vijay gill wrote:
Triband phones mostly operate on 900/1800/1900 frequencies. There is a major US deployment of GSM on the "cellular" GSM 850 band. So if you are with a triband phone on anyone other than Tmobile (which uses only 1900gsm in the US), you will not get adequately covered. You want either a US centric triband for use in the US with ATT/cingular that operates on GSM 850/1800/1900 and then get a world triband on GSM 900/1800/1900 and swap sims in and out (trivially easy to get most gsm phones unlocked)
I've had no drama at all going internation with T-Mobile service, using an unlocked (nokiafree.org) AT&T 6310i phone.
if you are going to be calling a lot while abroad, I suggest picking up an unlocked nokia 6310i and prepaid sims as you fly into airports. Put up a web page with your current phone number of choice.
Ugh. Much more convenient to just carry your phone with you ;-)
Also note due to fraud mitigation, most phones only allow you to call within the country you are in or back to the home country, all the while charging you an exhorbitant price.
Um, sorry but I've never seen this. I used to world-roam on AT&T, and now I do it with T-Mobile and never had any such drama. Kind of hard to place a call in Europe without calling the next country over ;-) AT&T used to rip me a new one for intl->intl calls, but t-mobiles rates are roughly half that and apparently do pass-thru charges for calls which don't leave a given providers network...? Anyway, I spent nearly a month in Spain this spring and my cell phone was my only contact, for both voice and many long hours of GPRS internet access, and the bill was only $890 or something similar. (I had a few 2.5k phone bills on similar length trips to England while using AT&T...) -- Joe Rhett Senior Geek Meer.net
At 06:04 PM 09/02/04 -0700, Joe Rhett wrote:
Also note due to fraud mitigation, most phones only allow you to call within the country you are in or back to the home country, all the while charging you an exhorbitant price.
Um, sorry but I've never seen this. I used to world-roam on AT&T, and now I do it with T-Mobile and never had any such drama.
ditto. color me clueless, but AT&T worked once upon a time, and T-Mobile works quite well for me now.
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 06:23:31PM -0700, Fred Baker wrote:
At 06:04 PM 09/02/04 -0700, Joe Rhett wrote:
Also note due to fraud mitigation, most phones only allow you to call within the country you are in or back to the home country, all the while charging you an exhorbitant price.
Um, sorry but I've never seen this. I used to world-roam on AT&T, and now I do it with T-Mobile and never had any such drama.
ditto. color me clueless, but AT&T worked once upon a time, and T-Mobile works quite well for me now.
This is more of an issue in SE asia in my experience than in europe. /vijay
vijay gill wrote:
Also note due to fraud mitigation, most phones only allow you to call within the country you are in or back to the home country, all the while charging you an exhorbitant price.
At 06:04 PM 09/02/04 -0700, Joe Rhett wrote: Um, sorry but I've never seen this. I used to world-roam on AT&T, and now I do it with T-Mobile and never had any such drama.
On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 01:42:57AM +0000, vijay gill wrote:
This is more of an issue in SE asia in my experience than in europe.
Sorry, again YMMV but I had no trouble with this in either Taiwan or Singapore, when I was responsible for support in those countries, Japan and Korea combined. I never saw a problem calling between any of those. Not saying it isn't so, just saying I never had this trouble me-self ;-) -- Joe Rhett Senior Geek Meer.net
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 07:48:00PM -0700, Joe Rhett wrote:
vijay gill wrote:
Sorry, again YMMV but I had no trouble with this in either Taiwan or Singapore, when I was responsible for support in those countries, Japan and Korea combined. I never saw a problem calling between any of those.
Not saying it isn't so, just saying I never had this trouble me-self ;-)
While this thread is rapidly become more annoying than a rectal itch to edward scissorhands, at the risk of continuing this some more, here is the roaming from ATT wireless for india, http://www.attwireless.com/international/travelguide/coverage_details.jsp?CI... Calls to international designations other than the USA are not allowed. Lets see Malayasia You may not be able to place calls to international destinations other than United States while roaming in this country. Calls can be completed within the visited country and back to the United States. Ditto Pakistan Bangladesh Indonesia etc. I am sure there are many counterexamples where it worked for you, but I've recently as of May this year, have international calls other than the US fail for me while on ATT while in SE Asia. YMMV, HTH, HAND, etc etc /vijay
vijay, vg> Lets see Malayasia vg> Indonesia Over the last few months, I have had no problems using my Cingular GSM Treo calling the US from Malaysia, Indonesia and China. Haven' tried calling to other countries, though. (And this is probably the only positive thing I can find to say about Cingular.) d/ -- Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com> Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com> Sunnyvale, CA USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>
On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Fred Baker wrote:
At 06:04 PM 09/02/04 -0700, Joe Rhett wrote:
Also note due to fraud mitigation, most phones only allow you to call within the country you are in or back to the home country, all the while charging you an exhorbitant price.
Um, sorry but I've never seen this. I used to world-roam on AT&T, and now I do it with T-Mobile and never had any such drama.
ditto. color me clueless, but AT&T worked once upon a time, and T-Mobile works quite well for me now.
t-mobile usa has significant holes in thier roaming agreements as far as I'm concerned... the most glaring ones in my recent past were korea telecom, and sonatel (senegal). t-mobile deutschland of course roams both places. joelja -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joel Jaeggli Unix Consulting joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2
t-mobile usa has significant holes in thier roaming agreements as far as I'm concerned...
Here in Austin, 3 years ago voicestream sold most of their GSM towers to ATT, and then sold their out-of-luck customers to tmoble. tmoble still drops every call on IH-35 by Capitol Plaza Mall. -bryan bradsby
On 3-sep-04, at 3:04, Joe Rhett wrote:
Anyway, I spent nearly a month in Spain this spring and my cell phone was my only contact, for both voice and many long hours of GPRS internet access, and the bill was only $890 or something similar.
Just wondering: what do you guys pay per minute when roaming on GSM networks abroad? For me it's around 1 euro ($1 excluding sales tax) to call within the country itself or back home and about half that for receiving calls in most European countries and the US.
On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 08:31:36 +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
Just wondering: what do you guys pay per minute when roaming on GSM networks abroad? For me it's around 1 euro ($1 excluding sales tax) to call within the country itself or back home and about half that for receiving calls in most European countries and the US.
<http://www.t-mobile.com/international/coverage.asp> USA users roaming abroad payUS$ 0.99, 1.49, 1.99 2.99 or 4.99 /min depending on location Secret is to get a local sim card in foreign countries. Jeffrey Race
On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Paul Vixie wrote:
Now that AT&T has followed T-Mobile's example by screwing the pooch on my cell phone billing, and I've flung yet another SIM-locked Motorola V600 out the window of yet another moving vehicle, and am about to enter into another year long "you violated the agreement first" small claims battle, I need a new GSM provider. I'm going to buy an unlocked tri-band GSM this time. Anybody had notable (good or bad) billing and/or customer service experiences with Voicestream or any other GSM provider with native coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area?
Voicestream IS t-mobile, at least out here. -Dan
(If you reply privately to me, I'll summarize back to the list.) -- Paul Vixie
-- "No mowore webooting!!!" -Paul, 10-16-99, 10 PM --------Dan Mahoney-------- Techie, Sysadmin, WebGeek Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC ICQ: 13735144 AIM: LarpGM Site: http://www.gushi.org ---------------------------
voicestream is tmobile everywhere On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 16:14, Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Paul Vixie wrote:
Now that AT&T has followed T-Mobile's example by screwing the pooch on my cell phone billing, and I've flung yet another SIM-locked Motorola V600 out the window of yet another moving vehicle, and am about to enter into another year long "you violated the agreement first" small claims battle, I need a new GSM provider. I'm going to buy an unlocked tri-band GSM this time. Anybody had notable (good or bad) billing and/or customer service experiences with Voicestream or any other GSM provider with native coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area?
Voicestream IS t-mobile, at least out here.
-Dan
(If you reply privately to me, I'll summarize back to the list.) -- Paul Vixie
--
"No mowore webooting!!!"
-Paul, 10-16-99, 10 PM
--------Dan Mahoney-------- Techie, Sysadmin, WebGeek Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC ICQ: 13735144 AIM: LarpGM Site: http://www.gushi.org ---------------------------
Thornton Cierra Group www.cierragroup.com Efficient Licensing and Consulting
On 2 Sep 2004, Paul Vixie wrote:
Now that AT&T has followed T-Mobile's example by screwing the pooch on my cell phone billing, and I've flung yet another SIM-locked Motorola V600 out the window of yet another moving vehicle, and am about to enter into another year long "you violated the agreement first" small claims battle,
Been there. The court saga for only few $$$ is usually not worth your time and any collection efforts for contested cellphone (and most other telco) charges and contracts can be stopped with couple properly written letters (its their job to go after you in court, not yours).
I need a new GSM provider. I'm going to buy an unlocked tri-band GSM this time.
Anybody had notable (good or bad) billing and/or customer service experiences with Voicestream or any other GSM provider with native coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area?
http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_us.shtml But as far as I know T-Mobile and ATT are the only two nationwide GSM providirs (Cingular too, but I hear it will soon be same as ATT). In my opinion GSM is really overrated and not seriously well deployed in US, consider CDMA providers, at least internet access would be faster (and typically cheaper) if you're using smartphone. -- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 04:54:48PM -0700, william(at)elan.net wrote:
In my opinion GSM is really overrated and not seriously well deployed in US, consider CDMA providers, at least internet access would be faster (and typically cheaper) if you're using smartphone.
That used to be true, but has fast fallen away out here in Cali. Motorcycle racetracks are out in the boondocks, and are often the last places to get good cell coverage. About a two years ago GSM phones started having better coverage than CDMA even at those locations, at which point I gave up and went GSM ;-) -- Joe Rhett Senior Geek Meer.net
On 02 Sep 2004 22:29:27 +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
Now that AT&T has followed T-Mobile's example by screwing the pooch on my cell phone billing, and I've flung yet another SIM-locked Motorola V600 out the window of yet another moving vehicle, and am about to enter into another year long "you violated the agreement first" small claims battle, I need a new GSM provider. I'm going to buy an unlocked tri-band GSM this time. Anybody had notable (good or bad) billing and/or customer service experiences with Voicestream or any other GSM provider with native coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area?
I have had nothing but terrific customer support from T-Mobile in the Boston area. They even answer the phone! Their coverage is spotty in many areas I have travelled around the U.S., but it is improving and you can set your handset to auto-seek an available network. (They have reciprocal roaming agreements with AT&T and Cingular.). However in large parts of Maine there is NO service anywhere. Voicestream was bought by T-Mobile. You can get unlocked handsets off eBay; I bought two Motorola triband units for $80 each. Notes from my T-Mobile rep: - OUTDATED HANDSETS: -Nokia 8890: some problems -Motorola Timeport series (all except one model is triband including L7089). Larger than V series. P280 is triband but has problems -Siemens one triband model. Problems. -[JR also finds: MOT P8097 Ericson R520] - Meg says can buy in aftermarket unlocked triband (or T-Mobile/Voicestream) Ericson T68m or T68i, Mot P7389 Timeport or L7089 (buy on eBay) My daughter will take that Motorola V600! (She nags me daily to buy one for her.) Jeffrey Race
You can get most of these phones unlocked from the sim lock and then <british>flog</british> it on ebay - goes to the time and effort costs of the aggrevation of dealing with mobile operators. Regards, Neil.
Now that AT&T has followed T-Mobile's example by screwing the pooch on my cell phone billing, and I've flung yet another SIM-locked Motorola V600 out the window of yet another moving vehicle, and am about to enter into another year long "you violated the agreement first" small claims battle, I need a new GSM provider. I'm going to buy an unlocked tri-band GSM this time. Anybody had notable (good or bad) billing and/or customer service experiences with Voicestream or any other GSM provider with native coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area?
(If you reply privately to me, I'll summarize back to the list.) -- Paul Vixie
AT&T spun off AT&T Wireless a couple of years ago, and the spinoff is renting the brand name and the Death Star logo, and probably buys a bunch of network and telco service from AT&T but is otherwise unconnected. As a stockholder of the spinoff company, I'm disappointed though not surprised that they annoyed you (they've been annoying lots of their customers recently), but my stock isn't much affected because Cingular has offered to buy them for $15/share, so the stock price has stabilized in the mid-$14 range until that happens or dies. Meanwhile, AT&T has started to resell Sprint Wireless to their business customers.
participants (15)
-
Bill Stewart -
Bryan Bradsby -
Dan Mahoney, System Admin -
Dave Crocker -
Dr. Jeffrey Race -
Fred Baker -
Iljitsch van Beijnum -
Joe Rhett -
Joel Jaeggli -
Neil J. McRae -
Paul Vixie -
Randy Bush -
Thornton -
vijay gill -
william(at)elan.net