[frankthomas]

Hi all, appreciate all comments in advance, am looking to hear about anyone's experience using verizon, a blackberry, and their experiences with data roaming .

I have a blackberry storm, service is with Verizon, it has a SIM card and is supposed to work offshore in GSM land. Here in CDMA land, I have the internet access and tether plan.

I do a fair amount of travel offshore. I used to keep an unlocked ATT phone for that kind of traveling, sometimes I would pop a foreign SIM card in, but most of the time, I don't have time for it.I would use it for basically a few phone calls and to check email on the phone through yahoo or gmail. Never tethered it though to a laptop. I shut my ATT account down when I got the blackberry storm.

I have talked to VZW about tethering my latop to my BB 9530 offshore, and they say they can give me an international flat rate data plan, and even more interesting, will allow me to do stuff like start it the day before I leave and terminate it the day after I come back, so I only pay a prorated rate for days actually used. Don't remember what the numbers were, but, if you are used to paying high airport and hotel WIFI access fees offshore, it seemed very reasonable.

So it all sounds good, but, does it really work? Got a trip coming up to the Carribbean very soon. My two big questions are: when out of the US in GSM land, my phone will be working on the GSM band. Do you do the tether any differently when operating in on GSM? (Right now I just use either VZ access or I have a DUN dialup which seems to work too)? - any problems with an offshore company like say Cable and Wireless not allowing the connection? Second question - if you bought the flat rate international data roaming plan, did you get hit with any unexpected charges that were somehow not included in the flat rate?

Thanks all!

[lastraid]

THe devices work well in GSM land. I have used mine all over central america. A lot of the carribean uses CDMA. Depends where you are going. As for thethering, it will wok in some CDMA countries and not at all in GSM.

A great site to check out of international services with vzw is www.vzw.com/international

[frankthomas]

THe devices work well in GSM land. I have used mine all over central america. A lot of the carribean uses CDMA. Depends where you are going. As for thethering, it will wok in some CDMA countries and not at all in GSM.

Thanks, I had looked at that site awhile back and just reread it. Hmmm. Not as good as I remembered it.

First, I noticed they say nothing about tethering, but only about international data roaming with a USB plug in that runs either CDMA or GSM.

Then the pricing was not very interesting at all. Regardless of what plan you are on, most of the Carribean is $20 a megabyte in addition to the monthly fee you sign up for.

[lastraid]

Tethering or global access with a modem is very expensive period.

Im my humble opinion, the data plans for the internal BB device that covers anything data a BB can do is not too bad. The global data is also prorated for the time it is added to the account.

[japhule]

I was in London for 3 weeks and switched to GlobalEmail plan during that time. I was able to tether using TetherBerry just fine.

One thing to note is that I don't believe there is any sort of unlimited SMS plan for international traveling. I had to pay per SMS. When I got back to the States, I forgot to change my plan back to my original plan, which included unlimited SMS. Any SMS I received while back in the US I was getting charged per SMS until I went back to my original plan.

Also, some of your data usage may not show up immediately in your first bill and may show up in a bill a month or 2 later. Most of my data usage was in the first bill but there will some small charges in my 2nd bill because the data usage was not reported immediately to Verizon when overseas.

[FF22]

I don't know anything about tethering while overseas. I used my then 8830 in Italy last summer for about 3 weeks. I went with the Global UNlimited data plan. It is $65/month (another $5./month gets phone calls cheaper but not cheap). It is pro-rated and also replaces you normal BIS billing. So if gone for 2 weeks, you pay $32 for the Global and for the US-two-weeks, you pay $15 (numbers are approx).

With the amount of data we used, the Global saved me about $300. Only made 3 phone calls. One to the States and two within Italy.

[cloudroller]

Tether will work GSM.