Jud Hardcastle wrote (1/28/2005 9:43 AM):
>>I travel through the Alcan highway frequently from 'Mainland' Alaska to
>>Haines, however to get there by land you have to drive through
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> and I believe a GAIT sim card as well. Haven't done it myself--I'm
> holding onto my real GAIT account as long as possible.
No, you don't necessarily need to have a GAIT SIM card, at least not in
all circumstances. This is based only on my own personal experience in
New England; I have no broad-based knowledge of how Cingular works.
About a month ago I established a new, GSM-only Cingular family plan
account and bought a pair of Nokia 3120s at the same time -- with new,
64-bit SIMs.
GAIT is available as a no-cost option to these supposedly GSM-only plans
if you have a GAIT phone; Cingular will not sell you a GAIT phone and
their agents will tell you GAIT is no longer available, but it isn't true.
After establishing the new family-plan service, I bought a Nokia 6340i
from an eBay dealer, called Cingular customer service and told them I
travel to places like northern New Hampshire and western Kansas, both
areas where it's almost exclusively analog. Cingular cheerfully took
the ESN number from the 6340i phone, activated GAIT service on one of
the two family-plan numbers, and I'm off and running, using the SIM
issued when I initially activated the GSM-only service. The 6340i
operates perfectly, switching onto TDMA and analog networks when
necessary, with GSM as the preferred service. And the same SIM works
perfectly well when swapped back into the 3120 (GSM-only) phone.

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RJW