Australian Mobile Phones in the USA

[llamatron]

Hi guys, just wondering if anyone had experience with this. For the past 2 years I've been on a contract plan with three mobile, I activated international roaming and successfully used my phone in Singapore and the U.K. however both times I went to the USA (Hawaii and California) the phone did not work (i.e. couldn't connect to any networks / get any reception).

Just wondering if anyone here has been able to use their Australian phone in the USA and if so what provider they are with.

[griffin]

Could just be 3 have no telco partner in America (or the parts you were in). I'm on Vodafone, and it was able to locate and connect to telcos in the states I've used it in (CA and Ohio).
Talk to your phone company and see if it is a problem on their end or yours (your phone).

[Sleeve]

I'm on Vodafone with my Blackberry and I connected to all networks when I was there (California and Illinois) in May. I made sure to turn off data services though because even though I get free unlimited internet here, it's not free when roaming. Something like 1c for every kb. When you receive a ton of emails each day that are around 720kb each, it adds up veeeeery quickly.

[Maxiewolf]

How old is your phone? You might need to manually change the band.

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/roa_auht.shtml these are all the networks that 3 Network uses for roaming.

AT&T and TMobile seem to be your only options in the USA, GSM 850/1900 and 3G 850 (Telstra phones tend to work good for that. Same band as Next G) - But alot of 3 Phones are meant to roam on parts of the Next G network so you may get lucky. Most other carriers use 3G 2100 here. so if your phone doesnt have 3G 850 you might be having trouble.

3G 2100 tends to work really widespread in asia.

[Scrapper]

It may not even be the carrier. I was recently looking at mobile phones on ebay and they said some of the Japanese phones work perfectly in other countries like UK and Australia and what not but they won't work in America or Canada I think it was to do with the actual phone not being compatible for their signals or something. It beats me I am not very good with those type of things but that's all I remember it saying.

[5FDP]

I'll just chip in my two cents worth - I have worked for a major telco in Australia for the past 7 years; specifically in technical support for mobile.

Roaming is dependant on the type of handset you are using while roaming (for the US it has to be at least a triband), and whether or not your carrier has roaming agreements in the country you are visiting. Of course, you must have roaming enabled on your service for this to work and ensure your carrier removes any IDD barrings so you can call out.

There are also other reasons why this would not work such as an ageing SIM card - check the numbers on the back of the SIM; the 9th and 10th digit relate to the year of manufacture and you want to make sure it's no older than 10 years. You'd be surprised how many people own a 10 year old SIM

When you are OS and the phone doesn't appear to attach to a network, perform a manual network selection on the handset to see which networks it is able to detect. When selecting an available network that your provider has an agreement with, it should display 'home network selected'. If you can't connect, then either your carrier doesn't have agreements with that carrier or, there is a problem with the network.

If you are still having issues, contact your providers technical support department.

Hope this helps.