Using my BB while traveling abroad

[edchauss]

Originally Posted by AtlSully

tmobile will unlock your phone, only if you bought it thru them and have had it for 3 months. if you bought it off ebay or something like that i dont think they will do it...but there are other companies that will do it for a fee.

if you purchase prepaid sim in Oz, you will receive a local number, your phone must be unlocked for this to work. the advantage of this is that you will have cheap local calls and you can still calll the US (via uma) for free.

Thanks, Sully. I was going to PIN you when I had a chance. So, even though I've been with TMO for 10 years and bought this phone from them I have to wait 3 months into my current contract for them to unlock it? Good thing I'm not traveling until late January. I'll have to set myself a reminder to do this so I don't forget. I'm going to PIN you later on when I get a chance. You mentioned some things about UMA I was curious about and now found a resource to go ask! Thanks again. The information you and Dawg have provided has been invaluable.

[Dawg357]

Sully:

Thanks for the information on the UMA issue - I was not really sure about that one.

Edchauss: There is a little confussion on this thread about the unlock code - - really all they want is that you have been on a post-paid contract plan of some sort for 90 days - - they do this for brand new customers......if you have been with them for as long as you have (10 years) you can get the unlock code now rather than waiting even if you just bought a phone - - what they are looking at in this case is your length of service.........they do this with new customers to insure they get 90 days into their contract. If you are on My T-Mobile there is a link to email customer care - - I just shoot them an email stating I want the code for intl travel to use a foreign pre-paid sim card - they are ok with all that. In the email be sure and list your account information such as Name on the account, your phone's IMEI number, your T-Mobile number of course.......and they will also ask for last four of your SSN for identification, and not a bad idea to include your BAN or account number if you have that......the nice thing about the email is they send you back very good step-by-step instructions for entering the code - - of course you can also get the instructions for entering the unlock code on this board by doing a little search on the steps for entering the code on your B-Berry.

That stuff about having two phones with me is just because it is a pain in the *** to change out sim cards all the time so I just put the foreign sim in an unlocked phone like a litte Nokia - - easy to carry - - and leave my T-Mobile sim in the B-Berry just in case I need to use the T-Mobile phone for anything - - of course this is just overkill and a convienience thing for me - - easy becasue I have phones all over the freakin' place
But obviously you don't really need to go that far.

[edchauss]

Originally Posted by Dawg357

Sully:

Thanks for the information on the UMA issue - I was not really sure about that one.

Edchauss: There is a little confussion on this thread about the unlock code - - really all they want is that you have been on a post-paid contract plan of some sort for 90 days - - they do this for brand new customers......if you have been with them for as long as you have (10 years) you can get the unlock code now rather than waiting even if you just bought a phone - - what they are looking at in this case is your length of service.........they do this with new customers to insure they get 90 days into their contract. If you are on My T-Mobile there is a link to email customer care - - I just shoot them an email stating I want the code for intl travel to use a foreign pre-paid sim card - they are ok with all that. In the email be sure and list your account information such as Name on the account, your phone's IMEI number, your T-Mobile number of course.......and they will also ask for last four of your SSN for identification, and not a bad idea to include your BAN or account number if you have that......the nice thing about the email is they send you back very good step-by-step instructions for entering the code - - of course you can also get the instructions for entering the unlock code on this board by doing a little search on the steps for entering the code on your B-Berry.

That stuff about having two phones with me is just because it is a pain in the *** to change out sim cards all the time so I just put the foreign sim in an unlocked phone like a litte Nokia - - easy to carry - - and leave my T-Mobile sim in the B-Berry just in case I need to use the T-Mobile phone for anything - - of course this is just overkill and a convienience thing for me - - easy becasue I have phones all over the freakin' place
But obviously you don't really need to go that far.

Dawg, thanks again. You've been more than helpful. I do use my T-Mobile online so I'm going to go on there and email them as you have suggested to get the unlock procedures. Also, thanks for the tip on the second cheapy phone. I may just do that. I was thinking though from what has been said on this thread about how the prepaid sim card works. If I don't get a second cheapy phone and just decide to swap out my tmo sim card for the prepaid sim card then when I'm using the prepaid sim card I won't be able to use my BB internet and data plan, right? Even if I've set it up (temporarily) for international use? Am I right about that?

[Dawg357]

Yes you are correct - - you would have to have the T-Mobile SIM card in your B-Berry to do any data such as email - - and the intl data roaming rate in round numbers is about $15 per megabyte (ouch) - course during a normal day most people only do a fraction of a megabyte and they only charge for the data you use as oppossed to charging a whole meg at a time - but if you want to use the B-Berry for email I would suggest adding on the intl B-Berry data plan for the $19.99/month and when you get back just remove that plan - it is just an add-on so you can add or remove anytime without affecting your contract.

You would basically only use the foreign pre-paid sim card for voice calls and text messages - - usually calling back to the states with the pre-paid sim is much cheaper than the $1.49 that T-Mo will charge for intl roaming - of course the rate on the pre-paid card will vary depending on the carrier you select - and of course if you are just calling locally for dinner reservations or something like that it will be way cheaper - maybe as low as 15 cents per min or so.

I think you are well on your way to figuring out how to hold your costs down - just be careful - - I used to work for T-Mo and we would get irate customers in the store all the time that came back from trip to Europe and ended up with $500 roaming charges because they didn't do their homework before going - and of course they wanted to blame everything on us! Lots of folks don't realize that if they leave their T-Mobile phone turned on and let incoming phone calls hit their phone and then go to voicemail that in essence it is an intl roaming call because the system is locating their phone on the foreign carrier and then the call is essentially getting bounced back to the US to get to their voicemail - - this bites a lot of people in the butttt

[Dawg357]

Oh - one other thing - - I noticed you are using a Curve - - if I don't want to get hit with any data roaming charges from recieving email when I am out of country with the B-Berry I just go into "Connection Manager" then go down the list to >Mobile Network Options and turn off "Data Services" - that way you can still do voice calls and not worry about incoming emails racking up roaming charges - - that is a handy feature on the Curve.