Who is Fido's cell coverage partner in Seattle Washington? Thx.

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Wil - 12 Jun 2006 01:02 GMT

just wanted to know becuase i've read that some U.S. carriers won't take
unlocked phones.

thanks.

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Brendan McCullough - 12 Jun 2006 04:19 GMT

> just wanted to know becuase i've read that some U.S. carriers won't take
> unlocked phones.
>
> thanks.

Fido customers roam on Cingular, the old AT&T, and T-Mobile (called
VoiceStream on older phones), whichever has the best signal. None of
them will support your Fido - but if you have a Fido SIM or one of
theirs, the handset will work just fine.

Brendan

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Wil - 14 Jun 2006 05:49 GMT

Thanks Brendan. i suppose i'll have to pack my old original fido phone
with me as a backup phone.

wil.

>> just wanted to know becuase i've read that some U.S. carriers won't
>> take unlocked phones.
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> Brendan

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Harry Eugene Ly - 12 Jun 2006 23:53 GMT

Not sure what you mean by "some U.S. carriers won't take unlocked phones".
As long as the unlocked **GSM** phone uses the same GSM band used in the
country, most (if not all) countries don't block the IMEI numbers to their
**OWN** IMEI numbers. All you have to do is insert one of their SIMs into
your unlocked GSM phone and as long as your GSM phone uses the same band, it
will work almost 100% of the time.

> just wanted to know becuase i've read that some U.S. carriers won't take
> unlocked phones.
>
> thanks.

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Wil - 14 Jun 2006 05:53 GMT

Hi Harry. there were some gripes that unlocked v3i phones didn't work
with alltell (sp?) and two other carriers in the states. some people
weren't happy because they purchased them from ebay...

wil.

> Not sure what you mean by "some U.S. carriers won't take unlocked
> phones". As long as the unlocked **GSM** phone uses the same GSM band
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>>
>> thanks.

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JF Mezei - 14 Jun 2006 06:02 GMT

> Hi Harry. there were some gripes that unlocked v3i phones didn't work
> with alltell (sp?) and two other carriers in the states. some people
> weren't happy because they purchased them from ebay...

The network doesn't know if your phone is locked or not. This is an
intimate handshake between the handset and the SIM card well before any
connection to the mobile network is made.

The network does get to see what type of phone you have. And the
network operate may decide that they woll not SUPPORT your handset
because their agents don't have access to that handset's manuals , nor
special network functions to upgrade your particular handset.

HOWEVER, consider the following: when a visitor from a foreign country
roams into their territory with that handset and a foreign SIM card,
they will happily let that handset work and collect the lucrative
roaming fees. But they don't have to support it nor help you debug
issues a traveller may have.

But if you insert one of their SIM cards in the handset, they gain a
certain amount of responsability for support since you become of of
their customers. If you don't tell them you have an unlocked handset and
just get the sim card, it should work. But you're on your own to
configure the handset for most of the additiona parameters outside the
SIM card.

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Harry Eugene Ly - 16 Jun 2006 01:40 GMT

For the past 5 years, I've used non-Fido supported unlocked GSM phones on
Fido's network. Never had any problems or issues. The only thing is that if
you are like me and call about something (like recently when I called about
their promotional name display not working on my account even though I have
caller id), they often just say "sorry but that feature only works with
**OUR** phones" without verifying anything on their end regarding my
account.

> > Hi Harry. there were some gripes that unlocked v3i phones didn't work
> > with alltell (sp?) and two other carriers in the states. some people
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> configure the handset for most of the additiona parameters outside the
> SIM card.

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Harry Eugene Ly - 16 Jun 2006 01:37 GMT

I'm not really familiar with Alltel but according to their webpage (The
Alltel choice for digital technology, CDMA is compatible on 800 mhz
phones.), I believe that Alltel uses CDMA technology and not GSM. CDMA
operators like Sprint, Bell, Telus, etc. are notorious for not allowing
competing carrier's cellphones from being activated on their network.With
GSM, I've never seen this happen. For Fido, I've always just purchased an
unlocked world phone (or a phone that is compatible with the GSM band used
by Fido) and I've never had any problems using it within the Fido network.

> Hi Harry. there were some gripes that unlocked v3i phones didn't work
> with alltell (sp?) and two other carriers in the states. some people
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> >>
> >> thanks.

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