Coverage in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico

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JD - 13 Feb 2004 08:46 GMT

I posted a few weeks ago asking what coverage existed in Merida. A few
people said a Verizon CDMA would work, and others said their T-Mobile phones
worked.

Well, my CDMA phone got a strong signal throughout the city. No GSM
coverage at all, no matter what I did to select a network.

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mike - 15 Feb 2004 21:02 GMT

Didn't get quite as far east from Cancun as Merida last week. Got to
Chicen-Itza.
Had two T-Mobile GSM phones with us and my "alternate" ATT TDMA
phone. Telcel provides almost continuous coverage - both TDMA and
GSM. Since Merida is the major city in the Yucatan, i am sure i would
have had service there as well. Others have posted good service
there.
Cancun actually has two GSM carriers. The new GSM carrier -
Movistar - is expanding. They probably have service in Merida as
well.
Movistar did not have service south of the Cancun airport. Telcel
has service all the way to Tulum and at least 10 miles south of there.
ATT TDMA lets you make outgoing calls on Telcel's TDMA, but no
incoming. That's how it worked for me.
Got incoming and made outgoing on both Telcel GSM and Movistar.
Great voice quality.
One interesting point - Movistar did NOT recognize the std. "code"
for making intl. calls. Elsewhere in the world you enter a "+" and
the country code to dial internationally - eg. #44andphonenumber to
call UK, +1areacodeandnumber to call U.S. With Movistar had to dial
"00areacodeandnumber" to call U.S.
With most T-M customers it would make no difference which network
you are on. For us old-timers who have the old intl. roaming rates it
makes a big difference. 38 cents/min. to call U.S. vs. $1.49!
Incoming is 28 cents vs. $1.49!!

...mike

> I posted a few weeks ago asking what coverage existed in Merida. A few
> people said a Verizon CDMA would work, and others said their T-Mobile phones
> worked.
>
> Well, my CDMA phone got a strong signal throughout the city. No GSM
> coverage at all, no matter what I did to select a network.

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JD - 16 Feb 2004 13:21 GMT

I found the source of the problem. It wasn't Merida...it wasn't the Mexican
companies....was T-Mobile. In December when I added more 500 sms minutes to
my plan, some idiot at t-mobile accidentally removed my international usage
permission (figure THAT one out). That was after about 30 minutes of having
the T-Mobile rep tell me that she couldn't tell me what the problem was
unless I called FROM Mexico, and that it was something wrong with BOTH local
Mexican carriers etc. etc. Sigh.

> Didn't get quite as far east from Cancun as Merida last week. Got to
> Chicen-Itza.
[quoted text clipped - 30 lines]
> > Well, my CDMA phone got a strong signal throughout the city. No GSM
> > coverage at all, no matter what I did to select a network.

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Eddie Walker - 19 Feb 2004 02:28 GMT

isn't telefonica(spain) converting the mexican stuff over from cdma? they
might not have all the kinks worked out (i think it used to be called
pegaso?)
ed

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News Reader - 19 Feb 2004 19:03 GMT

With GSM, I think it is fairly simple to find out ahead of time what the
rates will be in a particular country -- anyone know how to find out how
much Verizon would charge me to use my CDMA phone somewhere (Mexico, Canada,
etc.)? That's the kind of thing I'd like to know ahead of time :-)

Thanks

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