Reason why I can't roam in Italy?

[Oduzay]

I've recently arrived in Italy and wanted to buy an italian sim card, pop it into my unlocked bold 9700 and use that while I was here.

Firstly, I turned on my phone with the Bell sim still inside when we landed and all I got was an SOS icon next to the antenna.

Secondly, when I bought the italian Vodaphone sim card and put it in my phone it also had the SOS symbol next to the antenna icon.

Thirdly, when I connected to the hotel wifi I could browse and use whatsapp but for some reason bbm wasn't working.


I've done the battery resets and no change. I called Bell and between the reps that I spoke too I got people saying you can't use bbm over wifi (which I've done many times in the past) and that my roaming has been blocked (I was in India and the UK a few months ago and I could have sworn it worked in India... definitely in the UK)

Any suggestions welcomed. I have a friend who has a storm and his bbm is working via the wifi fyi

[Culex316]

Originally Posted by Oduzay

I've recently arrived in Italy and wanted to buy an italian sim card, pop it into my unlocked bold 9700 and use that while I was here.

Firstly, I turned on my phone with the Bell sim still inside when we landed and all I got was an SOS icon next to the antenna.

Secondly, when I bought the italian Vodaphone sim card and put it in my phone it also had the SOS symbol next to the antenna icon.

Thirdly, when I connected to the hotel wifi I could browse and use whatsapp but for some reason bbm wasn't working.


I've done the battery resets and no change. I called Bell and between the reps that I spoke too I got people saying you can't use bbm over wifi (which I've done many times in the past) and that my roaming has been blocked (I was in India and the UK a few months ago and I could have sworn it worked in India... definitely in the UK)

Any suggestions welcomed. I have a friend who has a storm and his bbm is working via the wifi fyi

Hi,

Couple of things:

1. Make sure your phone can pick up Vodafone's 2g or 3G network at least in Italy....if not, I recommend buying a SIM card from three (3, the name of the network operator) since they also offer a data plan for 5 Euros. Try selecting "Manual" and scan and look for a network manually.

2. Your BBM no longer works because whenever you insert a foreign SIM card into your Blackberry, your Blackberry service books and provisioning (that you get from Bell) get lost and cannot be restored until you:

a. Either activate a prepaid BIS plan with Vodafone Italy

b. Re-insert the Bell SIM and download the service books via roaming but this will obviously cost you roaming fees.


Once you do either of those, you can use BBM over Wi-Fi again.

I was in Rome a couple of weekends ago myself, hence the experience.