T-Mobile SIM Lock

[mtapal]

Hi,
I just bought a T-Mobile Pocket PC. It is locked onto T-Mobile and I want to use it on Cingular Wireless for a couple of days till my number is ported to T-Mobile in the next 5-6 days as I have been told.
Any solutions will be most appreciated but please understand it is a brand new unit I have bought after cooking the ROM on the old Siemens SX-56 still lying with me; and I really really don't want to mess this one up. It has Windows Mobile 2003 edition on it.
Thanks in advance for your help.

[cbrow51]

Before trying to unlock it, I would check that Cingular are NOT operating on the 850Mhz band in your area as they are in mine (Atlanta) As the XDA is only tri band, it will not work on Cingular's 850 network. Even if there are roaming options in your area, I have found that the Cingular SIM prevents roaming on 1900Mhz, when a native Cingular 850Mhz band is present.

[mtapal]

Thanks for the reply. Yups, u're right but I wanted to use the phone in London and its ok since they have a 900Mhz bank there. Also, I spoke to T-Mobile and they will be sending me the unlocking code in 4-5 days, they are more helpful than Cingular in that way.

[cbrow51]

Ah, London!, my home town!! You may know this already, but in case not, here goes...

Before you go, make sure that T-Mobile USA have your account set up to make international calls. When you get there, you will have to manually change the band on your phone to pick up the 900Mhz band. Once you do that, the phone will probably connect to either the O2 or the Vodaphone network, as T-Mobile operates only on the 800 band over there.... You will of course be hit for some pretty hefty call charges, as all your calls (even to UK numbers) will be treated as international calls. It took me a couple of trips and a couple of $400 - $500 monthly invoices to get wise to what was going on. Then, once I had the phone unlocked, I switched to using an O2 Pay and Go SIM card whenever I am in the UK, leaving a message on my US TMO voice mail with the UK number if someone wanted to reach me. It saved me a lot of money when I finally figured it out.

[mtapal]

Well my friend you saved me the trouble of figuring it out on myself and of course the huge amounts of un-justified spend dollars!!!

Thanks a bundle! I will take your advice and use the pay-to-go cards instead of my T-Mobile service, and leave the voice mail and I can as it is extract the voicemail from anywhere, unlike the Cingular voicemail which you cannot except just from your phone.

[cbrow51]

Great! glad to help :) A couple of other things spring to mind...

When you go into the O2 store to get the 'Pay and Go', see if they can also set you up for international calls. Its about a $3.00 one time activation fee. That way you will be able to dial back to the US with the Pay and Go SIM. Rates are about $1.50c a minute. You may have to phone O2 custmer service to activate it, buts its worth the trouble.

O2 will also give you a top up card that you can use at pretty much any gas, sorry, petrol station to top up your pay and go account. Just give the attendant the top up card, a credit card and tell them how much you want to add to your pay and go account. Its pretty slick!

Also, if you need to pull e-mail down from your US e-mail account, you can always just put the T-Mobile SIM back in and connect via GPRS through O2. I believe that there is a data option available with O2 Pay and Go as what they call one of their "bolt ons", but I never managed to get that done on my last trip. Anyway, have a good trip!!

[mtapal]

Thanks a million!