Able to Roam on T-Mobile in Phoenix with Cingular

[RH]

All,

AZ had mentioned he can switch to T-Mobile on his flexed Cingular phone and recently I thought since switching from ATT to Cingular here in Phoenix I would see if it would work for me. My manual network selection is disabled on the Cingular sim however I drove to the Scottsdale Fashion Square to the bottom of the cement parking garage where I knew ATT/Cingular would die and previously on my ATT GSM sim would get no service. Well I drove in and sure enought signal went to nothing then boom back to full signal and still said Cingular so I called 611 and got T-Mobile customer care. So this an advantage to anybody on the fence about switching from ATT Blue to Cingular orange. By the way the big V is dead there also just get searching for service.


RH

[WiggyFife]

Originally Posted by RH

All,

AZ had mentioned he can switch to T-Mobile on his flexed Cingular phone and recently I thought since switching from ATT to Cingular here in Phoenix I would see if it would work for me. My manual network selection is disabled on the Cingular sim however I drove to the Scottsdale Fashion Square to the bottom of the cement parking garage where I knew ATT/Cingular would die and previously on my ATT GSM sim would get no service. Well I drove in and sure enought signal went to nothing then boom back to full signal and still said Cingular so I called 611 and got T-Mobile customer care. So this an advantage to anybody on the fence about switching from ATT Blue to Cingular orange. By the way the big V is dead there also just get searching for service.


RH

I forgot what you told me, RH, but the phone you are using, was it locked, or unlocked???

[RH]

SS,

Both are 6010's and unlocked but that would not make a difference in this case only time that comes into play is if you take a T-Mobile sim and put it into lets say a Cingular branded locked phone it would not recognize the SIM unless the phone is unlocked.

RH

[WiggyFife]

Originally Posted by RH

SS,

Both are 6010's and unlocked but that would not make a difference in this case only time that comes into play is if you take a T-Mobile sim and put it into lets say a Cingular branded locked phone it would not recognize the SIM unless the phone is unlocked.

RH

cool... so even if the phones were locked, you could still select between the 2 networks, on a forced mode basis??? sweet...

[azcellphonejunkie]

I think with all my flashing and flexing of the phone, I have the menu enabled to allow manual switching from Cingular to T-Mobile. Ask sstrosberg, he can attest that I was able to do this while sitting in fuddruckers.

Because the manual selection is disabled on the Cingular branded phones/SIM, you are apparently not able to do this with all phones. His expereince with them in the parking garage at Scottsdale Fashion Square can be replicated at many places. I was up way north last night off of Pima road at a restaraunt last night, and my phone flipped over to the T-Mobile network because Cingular was dead there. It is nice to have these options when you are travelling, and I know that if it was the other way around, I would not be able to flip over to the Cingular network on a T-Mobile phone (trust me, I tried it down in Tucson in a dead area of a mall there).

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by sstrosberg

cool... so even if the phones were locked, you could still select between the 2 networks, on a forced mode basis??? sweet...

Not really select them, but make use of the T-Mobile network when there is no Cingular signal present...

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by RH

All,

AZ had mentioned he can switch to T-Mobile on his flexed Cingular phone and recently I thought since switching from ATT to Cingular here in Phoenix I would see if it would work for me. My manual network selection is disabled on the Cingular sim however I drove to the Scottsdale Fashion Square to the bottom of the cement parking garage where I knew ATT/Cingular would die and previously on my ATT GSM sim would get no service. Well I drove in and sure enought signal went to nothing then boom back to full signal and still said Cingular so I called 611 and got T-Mobile customer care. So this an advantage to anybody on the fence about switching from ATT Blue to Cingular orange. By the way the big V is dead there also just get searching for service.


RH

I bet your Nextel phone was dead as well. I remember going there with my Blackberry and not having service with that in many areas of the mall...

[azcellphonejunkie]

View the attached image. This is a photo of the T-Mobile coverage area around Scottsdale Fashion Square. You can see that they have great coverage through most of it, and good through the rest. The black box is the outline of where the mall is!

[WiggyFife]

Originally Posted by azcellphonejunkie

Not really select them, but make use of the T-Mobile network when there is no Cingular signal present...

according to TMo's covg locator, TMo should be awesome where I work. That would be something for me to take into consideration when I'm ready. Thanks...

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by sstrosberg

according to TMo's covg locator, TMo should be awesome where I work. That would be something for me to take into consideration when I'm ready. Thanks...

The only caveat to this is that if Cingular has any signal whatsoever, it will lock onto that unless you can find a phone that has the manual network selection. Like RH was saying, if your phone gets into a situation where there is no Cingular signal present, that is when it will flip to T-Mobile...

[aholzman1]

Originally Posted by azcellphonejunkie

The only caveat to this is that if Cingular has any signal whatsoever, it will lock onto that unless you can find a phone that has the manual network selection. Like RH was saying, if your phone gets into a situation where there is no Cingular signal present, that is when it will flip to T-Mobile...

BTW - this works for ATTWS locked phones as well. In Sisters, Oregon there is no ATTWS or Cingular service so my ATTWS locked GSM 6620 switched on its own to T-Mobile and worked fine, no issues.

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by aholzman1

BTW - this works for ATTWS locked phones as well. In Sisters, Oregon there is no ATTWS or Cingular service so my ATTWS locked GSM 6620 switched on its own to T-Mobile and worked fine, no issues.

A T-Mobile phone will switch over to AT&T/Cingular's network too, but only when the subscriber is in an area that is not covered by native T-Mobile signal. One place that comes to mind is I-40 from Flagstaff to New Mexico. There is Cingular coverage on the entire route, but nothing natively by T-Mobile. When I drove this, my T-Mobile phone displayed AT&T Wireless...

[Andy]

So even though one's Cingular phone might be roaming, the banner will still say Cingular? That's cheap!!!
But If I'd have an unlocked, unbranded GSM phone I could easily switch to T-Mobile whenever I wanted, correct?

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by Andy84094

So even though one's Cingular phone might be roaming, the banner will still say Cingular? That's cheap!!!
But If I'd have an unlocked, unbranded GSM phone I could easily switch to T-Mobile whenever I wanted, correct?

Sounds like that is what happens. I don't know if the switching from Cingular to T-Mobile is something that can be done with every unlocked/unbranded phone, but it works for me. I can't vouch for any other phones/manufacturers ect...

[WiggyFife]

Originally Posted by azcellphonejunkie

The only caveat to this is that if Cingular has any signal whatsoever, it will lock onto that unless you can find a phone that has the manual network selection. Like RH was saying, if your phone gets into a situation where there is no Cingular signal present, that is when it will flip to T-Mobile...

Is this just a temporary agreement between Cing & TMo, or will it always be this way???

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by sstrosberg

Is this just a temporary agreement between Cing & TMo, or will it always be this way???

It's a roaming agreement to the best of my knowledge. Kinda like Sprint users roaming on Verizon (where Verizon lets them )

[Andy]

Well I'm sure if Cingular's bills get too high and if they think they're good enough in the metro area then they might discontinue roaming within the metro area or something... it's possible

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by Andy84094

Well I'm sure if Cingular's bills get too high and if they think they're good enough in the metro area then they might discontinue roaming within the metro area or something... it's possible

Yeah it sure is, but I don't think that the few people who actually do it, or the number of calls that they would make on the T-Mobile network would really be that high.

I could be totally wrong though!

[Andy]

Well I'm not sure how adequate this example is, but for example, VZW eliminated Sprint roaming in Denver a while ago because of too much in market roaming...So I think this could quite possibly happen to Cingular users there as well, especially after Cingular upgrades/enhances the old AWS network within the year or so.

[azcellphonejunkie]

Originally Posted by Andy84094

Well I'm not sure how adequate this example is, but for example, VZW eliminated Sprint roaming in Denver a while ago because of too much in market roaming...So I think this could quite possibly happen to Cingular users there as well, especially after Cingular upgrades/enhances the old AWS network within the year or so.

That could very well be true. The thing for me though would be that if they did improvements, there would be no need for roaming!

[Andy]

That's true. We'll see about that. I'm almost tempted to signing with Cingular just to see if they're making any improvements here, but it would just be a waste of money, and Cingular would be gaining a customer, which is bad since I don't want them to LOL