[katyolsen]

I have the 8830 WE from verizon. I went to the store a few days ago to but the global sim card, which they inserted, adding the international plan, and assured me everything would work fine. I got to Sydney this morning and my phone will not get off SOS mode.

I tried a few things suggested such as manually selecting a network, restarting it, etc. but to no avail. vodafone au, yes optus, and telestra mobile pop up as networks, and when i first turn it on i get full signal which quickly turns back to SOS


PLEASE HELP!!

[castlerock611]

I dont know how long you been with verizon,but you can get verizon to unlock your bb and then you wont have to use their high price global plan,you can just use the local sim card for whatever contry you visit,i could have been the region you were in???

[yikes]

It sounds like your international plan was NOT set up correctly (most likely, the SIM was not actually activated, by the sounds of it). With Verizon and Sprint both being CDMA, they both seem to screw up quite a bit when relating to GSM. You will need to contact Verizon's international desk to have them fix it. Sprint has 800 numbers in almost every country with roaming, I suspect Verizon does too.

Note to the second poster -- while a local SIM may be great for voice calls, the data rates will be insane. The real reason people like me keep the Verizon and/or Sprint SIM cards in the 8830 is for cheap, unlimited, international, data access. I used roughly 300M of data in France last month. This would have cost a fortune with any local carrier!

[katyolsen]

It sounds like your international plan was NOT set up correctly (most likely, the SIM was not actually activated, by the sounds of it). With Verizon and Sprint both being CDMA, they both seem to screw up quite a bit when relating to GSM. You will need to contact Verizon's international desk to have them fix it. Sprint has 800 numbers in almost every country with roaming, I suspect Verizon does too.

Note to the second poster -- while a local SIM may be great for voice calls, the data rates will be insane. The real reason people like me keep the Verizon and/or Sprint SIM cards in the 8830 is for cheap, unlimited, international, data access. I used roughly 300M of data in France last month. This would have cost a fortune with any local carrier!

you were right...they didn't activate my sim card. especially frustrating as i actually went into the store to get my plan activated and sim inserted. thank you SO much.

[katyolsen]

HELP! my phone is stuck in SOS again!

all of a sudden, I lost GPRS and couldn't call, text, or use data features. I tried everything to get it back.

a couple of hours later, it went to SOS mode again and won't come out! I've run out of ideas!

[JRSCCivic98]

Sounds like you have an older OS installed on the phone which used to have issues with switching radios. Go into your radio config and change it to use GSM all the time. Then change it to XEV when you get home. It's probably on Global now which means to auto-switch between the two. This normally works, but not if you have the older OSs. The newer releases fixed this problem. Try that.

[katyolsen]

Sounds like you have an older OS installed on the phone which used to have issues with switching radios. Go into your radio config and change it to use GSM all the time. Then change it to XEV when you get home. It's probably on Global now which means to auto-switch between the two. This normally works, but not if you have the older OSs. The newer releases fixed this problem. Try that.

Yeah I tried switching it to GSM all the time.

My blackberry says I'm using v4 2.2.66 (platform 3.0.0.45). My friend who was down here last week has the same phone and is using the same version and his phone worked perfectly. Has something changed in the past week?

[JRSCCivic98]

That's old software. That version I think had the radio switch issues. So, after you switched it to GSM, do you still have a problem or is it fixed? If the problem is solved, you need to upgrade your phone's OS. If not, then you need to reregister your phone on the carrier's network. Go to Options/HRT and reregister. This sometimes helps with network provisioning issues.

[katyolsen]

That's old software. That version I think had the radio switch issues. So, after you switched it to GSM, do you still have a problem or is it fixed? If the problem is solved, you need to upgrade your phone's OS. If not, then you need to reregister your phone on the carrier's network. Go to Options/HRT and reregister. This sometimes helps with network provisioning issues.

It isn't solved when I switch to GSM. And it won't let me switch to another network.

How do I download the new OS? I have a mac.

I tried to re-register and it wouldn't let me until I get data coverage.

Verizon claims they're having some major issue with vodafone...and don't know when it'll be fixed

[JRSCCivic98]

You won't be able to update the OS on the phone with a Mac. So sorry, Macs can't do everything after all. You'll have to find someone with a PC, Desktop Manager loaded, and then go to VZW's download site for the OS upgrades and get the new release. Your version of the OS is several releases old btw. Only other option would be to go to a VZW store and have them update the phone, but I wouldn't put it past them if they do it wrong and completely wipe the handheld's data by mistake. It's happened before. This is the site for the update. BlackBerry® Software Updates