USA Nokia 3120 "No network connection here"

Cassiel

Hi,
My sister bought a Nokia 3120 in the US and brought it back here.
it is supposed to be triband 850/1800/1900. When using her O2 SIM card from here old 3310 phone, we get "No network detected". I have changed Network selection from Automatic to Manual but no joy. I then stumped up a few quid to get an unlock code, but the bloody thing was actually unlocked! So I don't know what is wrong with it. I have tried my Vodafone SIM also but it did not work. Anyone have a fair idea as to what is wrong??

Thanks in advance.

Cassiel

flywheel

hi, it's a Tri-Band handset but specifically for the American market i.e. supporting 850/1800/1900

a Tri-Band for over here would support 900/1800/1900 - as our networks use 900 and 1800 bands for coverage

so with the US 3120 handset you would only get signal in an area covered by 1800 here... as in the other areas coverd by 900 the handset won't get any signal

Tri-Band can mean differnet things in differnet terrirories I'm afraid. A Quad band handset offers greater portability supporting 850/900/1800/1900 bands, but they are still in the minority...

BrianG

joerules

Hi,

I agree with the other poster. The phone will only be able to see Networks in the 1800Mhz band here, which tend to be in the larger cities.

Another factor to keep in mind is that O2 and Vodafone (meteor is slightly different), mainly use the 900Mhz band. They introduced 1800Mhz on their networks due to congestion. The same thing is happening in the USA with the 850Mhz band. But, what the networks over there do is restrict access to this band. You cannot chose to go onto this band, the network has to put you on it (it's got to do with control channels). Possibly, that may be the reason here. Although the O2 network does use 1800, maybe you cannot personally select it. I'm not 100% sure though because no phone (european) allows you to select the band. It's just another possible reason.

Hope you manage to resolve it.

Joe

bp_me

You say it's a 3120, which presumeably is the American version of the 3100, which I believe is a triband (europe) phone.

Now the logical thing to do when building these phones (for the manufacturer) is to simply put in different software to tell the phone which bands it is allowed to use. The current batch of motorolas are like this (my v300 is now quadband ), so prehaps nokia do this also, as it would be cheaper to make one handset and install different software, than making two handsets.

What I'm getting at here is that MAYBE it's possible to flash the phone to a european firmware and have euro triband. Of course if you do this and mess it up I am NOT responsible, nor do I even know how to flash a nokia phone. Also it will most likely void your warranty.

joerules

joerules wrote:

Although the O2 network does use 1800, maybe you cannot personally select it. I'm not 100% sure though because no phone (european) allows you to select the band. It's just another possible reason.

I was in Cabinteely a couple of weeks back and I noticed from the ComReg Site Viewer website that the Lucent Technologies building has a Meteor GSM1800 cell on it. Its pretty visible if you look.
Anyway, I popped on my V300 and it registered properly on the 1800 cell, I was only a few feet from it. I confirmed this in the Field Test mode.

It looks to me like 1800 works fine in Ireland, I don't think there's any restrictions on the band. But I think that Meteor only use 1800MHz in Dublin, maybe in Cork or Limerick. O2 have them in a lot of smaller towns, such as Tralee.

flywheel

as Karsini mentions the site viewer details the bands in use at various sites...

using a US tri-band phone if there's no 1800 coverage in an area it will get no signal - a mate bought a T616 (850/1800/1900) on eBay in error, he managed to get okish coverage in most of the places he would be around Dublin and other cities but did hit frequent black spots and experienced plenty of no signal areas travelling around

with some of our (usually older) tri-band handsets you need to select which band to use when travelling out of the dual band 900/1800 (GSM/DCS) area i.e. over to a 1900 (PCS) area - but modern handsets tend to the selection automatically now

BrianG

dublin_apache

DubWireless wrote:

as Karsini mentions the site viewer details the bands in use at various sites...

using a US tri-band phone if there's no 1800 coverage in an area it will get no signal - a mate bought a T616 (850/1800/1900) on eBay in error, he managed to get okish coverage in most of the places he would be around Dublin and other cities but did hit frequent black spots and experienced plenty of no signal areas travelling around

with some of our (usually older) tri-band handsets you need to select which band to use when travelling out of the dual band 900/1800 (GSM/DCS) area i.e. over to a 1900 (PCS) area - but modern handsets tend to the selection automatically now

BrianG

Does he still use the phone ? If so I'd say it does his head in loosing the signal all the time.

@Cassiel - I'm head'n to the US (hopefully) in 2 weeks time to see family there, so if you want I'll buy it off you for one of my cousins over there... well that's if you don't get it sorted...

bp_me was saying that if you could get it flashed with the Nokia 3100 firmware it might sort it .... But up you of course...

But like I said I'll buy it off you if you want.