TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Alltel/AT&T/Cingular in Oklahoma City Market Area

Re: Alltel/AT&T/Cingular in Oklahoma City Market Area

John Levine (johnl@iecc.com)
27 Aug 2005 20:33:34 -0000

> So does Cingular do something active to block the use of "foreign"
> GSM phones on its network or does it rely on such phones being
> subsidy-locked to another provider's network?

I've used a variety of GSM phones on my Cingular accounts, and they
all work fine so long as they work at the right frequencies.

In Cingular's mild defense, in some areas they're various combinations
of GSM 850, GSM 1900, and still some TDMA 800 and 1900. Most used GSM
phones are GSM 1900, maybe with Euro 900 and 1800 mixed in, and they
won't work on Cingular's largely GSM 850 network.

Even the wrong Cingular phone can fail to work on their own network,
e.g., I just bought a used Nokia 6340i and the seller accidently sent
me a 6340, with the difference being that the 6340 doesn't do GSM 850
which is what Cingular uses around here, so it only gets a faint
signal from an ex-AT&T GSM 1900 cell ten miles away. Oops. I took
one look and knew what was wrong, but a non-technical user could
easily leap to the wrong conclusion about what his problem was.

> Cingular spokesman Frank Merriman said the company won't allow users
> to bring telephones from other networks to ensure "quality remains the
> same across the board" for its users.

That's not even true. When my wife lost her phone last month,
Cingular was happy to sell me a new SIM chip to use in an unlocked
T-Mobile phone I had lying around.

R's,

John

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