Mobile phone international roaming

[Roger]

Hi all,
I am travelling to the USA & Canada (Montreal) later this year. I am about to change phones and require one that will work in both of the above places. I usually prefer a Nokia phone ang generally my provider is Telstra. I understand that a Tri Band (GSM) phone is required.
Any advice would be most appreciated.....

Roger

[straitman]

Hi all,
I am travelling to the USA & Canada (Montreal) later this year. I am about to change phones and require one that will work in both of the above places. I usually prefer a Nokia phone ang generally my provider is Telstra. I understand that a Tri Band (GSM) phone is required.
Any advice would be most appreciated.....

Roger

Roger,

I have successfully used a Motorola Tri band flip phone (forgotten the model) with Telstra as the provider.

I believe most 3G phone would be OK. My Nokia N95 works fine in NZ and I'm told it will work OK in the USA.

Hope that helps.

[munitalP]

I have a HTC slide phone PDA 3G thing, it seems to work everywhere I go...

I had a problem the other day in HKG though, phone worked fine day one, then Telstra (unexplained) call banned me. PA spoke with Telsra and they unsucessfully tried to remove it - didn't work. No outgoing calls or TXT however, the internet and email still worked!

I had to use my laptop WiFi sim card to make calls...

The ban came off as I re-entered Australia on Thursday AM.... very frustrating...

If you ring Telstra Roaming, give them your phone model, they will tell you if the phone works at the destination of your choice - I did this with a previous Samsung phone I had...

Mr!

[Evan]

I<..>

I had a problem the other day in HKG though, phone worked fine day one, then Telstra (unexplained) call banned me. PA spoke with Telsra and they unsucessfully tried to remove it - didn't work. No outgoing calls or TXT however, the internet and email still worked!
<..>

Funny i had this happen to my Singtel phone in HKG recently (work provided in SIN) very very annoying !!! Anyway my Optus one worked fine from AU.
E

[Robert Barlow]

Hi all,
I am travelling to the USA & Canada (Montreal) later this year. I am about to change phones and require one that will work in both of the above places. I usually prefer a Nokia phone ang generally my provider is Telstra. I understand that a Tri Band (GSM) phone is required.
Any advice would be most appreciated.....

Roger

My wife and I went to Europe and the US last year and, yes, in the US you definitely need a Tri Band phone. We bought two Samsung SGH-L760 Sliders and they never missed a beat

[Robert Barlow]

The Samsungs also worked well in Asia.

[dot]

As others have said already - to work in the LOTFAP you need a tri or quad band phone so that the phone is capable of using the frequencies they use in North America and the frequencies in the rest of the (GSM) world.

If you also need to travel to Japan or Sth Korea, your phone will need to be a 3G phone (most of which are also tri band handsets as well)

[Roger]

Thanks for your posts. I will start investigating....

Roger

[moa999]

To be specific.
Australia GSM is 900 / 1800 MHz
US GSM is 850 MHz / 1900 MHz - moreso 850
so ideally you want a quad-band GSM phone that covers all four frequencies....

or given you are buying a new phone it is probably worthwhile investing in a 3G model.
Australia 3G is 2100 MHz in the cities with nextG on 850 MHz and Opt/Vod considering 900 Mhz regional network
US 3G is 850 / 1900 MHz (AT&T) and 1700 / 2100 MHz (T-Mobile)

[ozimax]

When I visit the USA (14th trip next month coming up) I just pop into Walmart, pick up a prepaid phone for $30 (USD). This usually includes a brand new Nokia phone plus 300 minutes of credit. Can't beat that deal. They may be cheaper again this year.

I still keep my iphone on, but I divert voice calls to my home phone, and only accept SMS while roaming. This cuts cost down substantially.

Just my two bob's worth.

Ozi.