Greg wrote:
> Dennis Ferguson <dcferguson@pacbell.net> wrote in
> news:slrneve4sk.85.dcferguson@akit-ferguson.com:
>
>> On 2007-03-13, Greg <x_gblum@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>> .................. <snip>
>>> have a Sony Erickson W300i. One of the capabilities I made sure of
>>> before upgrading my phone was that it was a full quad band unit.
>>> Supposedly the SE is.
>>>
>>> What happened to me was that even though my phone showed a full 5
>>> bars of signal strength, it displayed "No Network Service" except
>>> when first powered on. If I cycled the phone on and off, it came up
>>> with Cingular service and let me make a call.
>>> .................. <snip>
>> I'll make a huge guess that could be entirely out to lunch. Was the
>> place where you were spending time near Red Hook, or at least at the
>> eastern end of the island, maybe on the north coast? And do you not
>> have international roaming enabled on your account?
>>
>> .................. <snip>
>>
>> If any of this sounds familiar to you then my guess (grasping at
>> straws) would be that you might be seeing this other network now
>> because of your quad-band phone, and that your phone is somehow
>> sticking with this strong network that it couldn't get service from
>> rather than searching for the weak Cingular home network. This
>> behaviour is kind of broken, though I know it is approximately what
>> CDMA phones do when they go into E911 mode so it might not be entirely
>> inexplicable.
>>
>> If none of this seems right, however, then never mind.
>>
>> Dennis Ferguson
>
> You may be onto something, but not the location. I was in the south
> central part of the island - Charlotte Amalie. I do not have
> International Roaming on my account. It sure seemed like the scenario
> you were describing, however. I was getting a full strength signal from
> someone, just not Cingular. When I cycled the phone and it came back as
> Cingular the strength was 2-3 bars. When it reverted to 'no network' it
> jumped to full.
>
> I had also thought about the GAIT issue, but with discounted it since my
> SE was showing such high strength of something.

You'll often see a good signal that you can't use with both GSM and CDMA
if there is no roaming agreement with whoever the signal belongs to.

The reason I would think that GAIT had something to do with it with the
6340 is because it's likely that any AMPS service there belonged to
either Cingular (AT&T) or Verizon, and the Cingular AMPS would be fair
game for non-roaming service (and perhaps the Verizon AMPS as well).

> I'm not technical enough
> to know for sure, but I would have thought that my GSM phone would not
> even know a TDMA signal existed.

I think it's a mistake to believe that the GSM signal that your SE phone
picked up was the same signal that the GAIT phone was actually using in
the past.

Remember that the 6340 would not pick up a 900 MHz or 1900 MHz GSM
signal, but the SE will. There are too many variables here to be sure of
anything, but the whole reason for the GAIT phones was to be able to use
the more extensive AMPS and TDMA networks while the GSM network was
being built out.

> My 6340 didn't really tell me when it
> was in GSM, TDMA, or AMPS mode so I wouldn't have known if it was
> switching. I do know that I had no trouble making or receiving calls and
> didn't have any extra charges (roaming or otherwise) on my bill after
> returning home.

Because you were probably not roaming, you were probably on AT&T's AMPS
network, if it existed there. There also may have been a roaming
agreement with the other AMPS network. Last time I roamed onto the
Cingular/AT&T AMPS network on my Verizon handset I was not charged
roaming, and I assume that this is because Verizon once had a roaming
agreement with AT&T Wireless for AMPS.

Maybe you could use the 6340 on your trips to St. Thomas, and the SE at
other times.