Edited by author 08-16-2003 05:37 AM
How can US mobile phones provide a useful emergency location service, if the networks die as soon as there's a real emergency?

And in this week's New York power blackout, it was noticeable (reports the New York Times) that the ordinary wired phone system carried on working, but that cellphones all died...

Can a phone bought in America be used in the UK?

It depends if it's a triband phone. Actually a dual band phone would do! - in Europe, we have two GSM bands.

One is the standard 900 MHz "old" style GSM, used by Vodafone and mmo2 in the UK. The other is the PCS frequency, at 1,800 MHz, used by Orange and T-Mobile (and Virgin) and so on.

America uses the 1,900 MHz spectrum, so a true international phone has to use all three. If you have a 1900 plus 1800 phone, though, that would work.

I have no idea if there is such a beast...

If I buy a phone in the USA can I use it with the sim card from the phone I have now in the UK (T Mobile)

if i buy a phon and take it to new york why doesn;t work what happens to the phone if i take it over there.

Edited by author 07-29-2005 12:41 PM
Jim:
you have to be careful. Some phones will work. Others won't.

Phones that won't work in Europe are ALL phones that use America's original standard, CDMA.

For a US-bought phone to work over here, it must be a GSM phone. But even then, you may have a problem; there are some phones which don't work on European frequencies. To work over here, it must be a tri-band phone at least - and a lot of American GSM phones are not.

Jade:
There are two main reasons why your UK phone might not work in New York.

First, it may simply not be tri-band; it needs to work properly on the 1.9 GHz frequency they use in North America. If it isn't, it can't be made to work - end of story. Equally irritating, if you don't know how to make it work, is a tri-band phone which doesn't automatically switch to 1.9 GHz, and needs you to find a setting buried in a pile of menu options... that varies from phone to phone.
But second, the thing may have a tri-band radio, but it may not be paid for. You may need to ask your operator for "roaming" to be enabled.
And sadly, even if you do, and pay for it, experience shows that a lot of them screw it up, and you get to NY and the thing simply doesn't work, and you can't call home to complain.

As an after-thought: there is one absolute "will not work" situation: that's if you have a phone from "3". Hutchison has not managed to find a roaming partner in the US, period.

Hutchison's phones, as provided with "3" accounts, will indeed work on GSM 1800, and some may well work on GSM 1900 as found in the US... but you'd have to get a US contract and swap the SIM card out. I don't know that it will fit, even; the USIM may not be compatible.

Final warning; GSM phones work in places like New York, San Francisco, and other large metro areas. Wander out into the wilderness, and no, you will find it's unlikely to get a signal.
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