SOLVED - Invalid Sim - SOS - 9100 Pearl

[Verminator]

Hopefully this will help someone out there that is experiencing the same thing I did over the last two days.

I have a Pearl 9100 on Telus with v5 firmware. Yes, I know there is v6 firmware for it, but the 9100 has limited memory and v6 is bigger and I just don't need anything to run any slower than it does.

Anyway, the other day I woke up to find that after my middle of the night QuickPull my Pearl showed "Invalid SIM" and "SOS" where the signal strength meter is.

Over the next two days I tried absolutely everthing to fix this myself. Physical battery pulls, removing and re-seating the SIM, blowing out the SIM slot with compressed air, ensuring the gold contacts on the SIM card were clean...everything. At times when I would boot up it would ask for an "unlock code" and when I went to the Manage Connections area I was surprised to see the Blackberry had already defaulted to the Rogers network, despite the BB being a Telus unit with a Telus SIM card. Previous to this problem the Pearl had worked just fine since last November.

I called Telus and to my surprise they advised me that already had a trouble ticket open on this issue and it was affecting other users as well and they had no time frame on getting it resolved. After two days of no phone, I'd had enough! Telus' claim of "we're still working on it" just wasn't good enough!!

Anyway, long story short I finally discovered a fix for this. Although Telus has still not permenantly fixed this issue, I realized that the Telus SIM card I had was an original v1 SIM. There is no "V1" stamped on the SIM itself, it's the absence of a version number that tells you it's a Version 1 SIM card. Lucky for me I had one of my other BB's replaced under warranty a while back and it came with a brand new SIM, even though I didn't need it. I took it out and noted that this new SIM card had a "V2" under the SIM card number. Hence, a Version 2 SIM card. Both a Version 1 and Version 2 Telus SIM card look absolutely identical except that the V2 one has "V2" stamped at the bottom of the SIM right after your SIM card number.

I called Telus and they told me that their notes on the on going problem told them at replacing the SIM with another SIM would NOT solve the problem. I told them about me noticing the original Version 1 SIM and then noting that there was now a Version 2 SIM. They told me it wouldn't work.

I asked the Telus rep to humour me and activate the Version 2 SIM to my Pearl just to see if it would work. He did so, and guess what? It fired up perfectly and has been working just fine ever since!!

So in my case, with a Telus BB Pearl 9100, Version 5 software and a Version 1 Telus SIM card, the fix is to replace the SIM with the newer Version 2 SIM card.

Yes, Telus should probably tell people about this now, but they probably won't as they work to find a fix to making those affected work with Version 1 SIMS. What they seem to not realize is most people depend on their BB everyday and have their whole life stored on it, and it's just not acceptable to say "we're working on it" while you have no working BB for a day, or two or a week or however long it will take them.

So if you find yourself in this same situation, and you want to get your phone working again instead of waiting for Telus to eventually fix it, go spen $10 at your local Telus Store, Future Shop, Best Buy, wherever and get yourself a Version 2 Telus SIM and give it a try. It worked for me...and it's still working!

Good luck!!