USA Roaming

rhapsody · 24-06-2008 12:53pm #1

Am going to New York soon (short hol), I've a Sony Ericsson K550i and am on O2. Will it work over there? Do i need to ask O2 to do something to my phone? It works ok in Europe.

biko · 24-06-2008 1:03pm

Phone is triband so it'll work.
I'm on vodafone and have had problems in US. Ask O2 who it is that they have agreement in the states (whose network you must choose)

Random · 24-06-2008 10:59pm

Cingular work for O2 in the states. All O2 mobiles are setup for roaming unless you have asked otherwise.

rhapsody · 25-06-2008 11:15am

thanks guys

Stokolan · 25-06-2008 5:26pm

If you log into your o2 online account there should be an option to turn roaming on or off in the extra services section.

whisht · 26-06-2008 9:56am

Cingular/AT&T still use 850Mhz towers in the US, so if your phone was triband as biko said, and you were in an area where thats your only network, the K550i would not work, but the K550i is a quadband phone, so it will work fine in any area with coverage

rhapsody · 26-06-2008 11:00am

whisht- you have both unnerved me and reassured me! thanks

whisht · 26-06-2008 3:07pm

Hehe. Sorry. Didn't mean to unnerve you
Could have just said yeah it will work, but put the rest in for anybody searching to find out if their phone will work in the US also.

Basically if your phone is triband, it might not work if you are in an area where ATT&T/Cingular are using an 850Mhz tower. This is very important because almost every phone shop I have ever visited continue to tell people, oh if its triband it will work no problem!!!!

You must have a quadband phone to work on all USA networks

Lainey-dee · 10-07-2008 12:36am

Are you on O2 billpay or prepay?

If billpay, you can call Customer Care and ask them to add My Europe to your account. This is free and will give you cheaper roaming rates for calls.

Random · 10-07-2008 12:47am

Lainey-dee wrote: »

Are you on O2 billpay or prepay?

If billpay, you can call Customer Care and ask them to add My Europe to your account. This is free and will give you cheaper roaming rates for calls.

This is true. Just make sure you remove the addon when you get home as it offers worse rates in Europe than the EU Roaming Rates (they had the My Europe addon out before the EU Roaming Rates came in and at the time it offered better rates than their standard ones). THe addon is now only useful for the US and one or two other countries.

d-redser · 10-07-2008 1:04pm

Is the N95 a tri or quad band phone?

Doctor DooM · 10-07-2008 1:10pm

d-redser wrote: »

Is the N95 a tri or quad band phone?

AFAIK it's quad.

Doctor DooM · 10-07-2008 1:11pm

Make sure to ring O2 to confirm roaming is set up on your account before you travel as if you have an issue while abroad, they will not be able to fix it til you get back.

rhapsody · 10-07-2008 1:16pm

I had roaming in amsterdam, without asking for it, so I think thats ok, its just the American system is different...

I'm not billpay sadly, but only really want to use my phone for the odd text etc, so dont mind the cost

Lainey-dee · 10-07-2008 1:19pm

SDooM wrote: »

Make sure to ring O2 to confirm roaming is set up on your account before you travel as if you have an issue while abroad, they will not be able to fix it til you get back.

It is possible to set up roaming while abroad. All you have to do is ring your network provider and they can provision you.

whisht · 10-07-2008 1:53pm

d-redser wrote: »

Is the N95 a tri or quad band phone?

Its quad GSM but our version has the 2100Mhz European 3G band and the USA version has 850/1900 Mhz 3G, so our version will not work on 3G when on US networks

d-redser · 10-07-2008 2:12pm

whisht wrote: »

Its quad GSM but our version has the 2100Mhz European 3G band and the USA version has 850/1900 Mhz 3G, so our version will not work on 3G when on US networks

so the phone wont work over in the US :rolleyes:

whisht · 10-07-2008 2:40pm

It will work ok but the 3G signal wont

Bluefrog · 10-07-2008 4:24pm

Just to clarify for the untechy:

3G will not work in the USA. However, this would only be a concern if you were downloading from the Internet while away - not a wise practice anyway unless you are sure what you are doing. It will have no real noticable effect on your voice service and will not affect your SMS coverage in any way.

grandlike · 10-07-2008 10:05pm

o2's agreement used to be with AT&T, however its t-mobile now as far as I'm aware. Theres 2 things you need to be aware of when roaming with t mobile, firstly if you're in New York, you may not be able to dial back to Ireland using 00353 or +353, if this is the case, use 001 353.

The second this to keep in mind is that t-mobile advertise national coverage, similar to meteor, however they have an agreement with another network with whom their customers roam. This is where irish customers may encounter difficulties, as they are roaming...twice... if you get me. An example is o2 customers, roaming with t mobile in south carolina In this state, t-mobile have an agreement with AT&T here, so o2 customers may have difficulty in making and receiving calls.

Sorry for ranting on here... got carried away!

rhapsody · 10-08-2008 6:19pm

Just to let people know, in case anyones looking again, my phone (Sony Ericsson K550i on 02 network) did work for calls & texts in New York. I think it switched over to At&T. I didn't try connecting to internet. Thanks for info all

USA Roaming

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