GSM cell phones and SIM cards, the continuing story
Of cell phones, SIM cards, and questionable business practices.
Part Deux
After my first experience with GSM cell phones and Rogers, you would
think I would have given up, but I am a rather stubborn person, as well
as a bit impulsive on buying toys. So, I went out and bought myself a
Motorola V66 while I was travelling in Asia. Fortunately, you can buy
them there without a lock on them, so then you can insert anybody's SIM
card into them. The V66 was a wonderful cell phone, I was very happy
with it. It is small, light, has a good battery life, and I do like the
flip phone design.
By the way, I found that there are a few questions on GSM cell phones
from people visiting my former web-page, so I thought I address a few
of them, and answer some of the common questions.
Q: How can I unlock a locked GSM phone?
A: I understand that you can buy the codes online on eBay. Actually,
if you go to eBay, and type in the search criteria 'unlock code', you
will literally find hundreds of offers. I personally don't support doing
this, it's not really illegal, but it is a violation of the agreement
with the service provider. I just wish the service providers would not
play those silly games, and instead concentrate on providing good service
for a fair price.
Q: Can you plug a SIM card into a CDMA phone.
A: No, it's a totally different technology. CDMA phones do not accept
SIM cards. The SIM card technology is actually fantastic from the
concept, because all of your identities as well as your phone numbers
are actually stored on the SIM card. If you rent a car that has a GSM
phone built in, you simply take your card out of your phone, plug it
into the car phone, and all your incoming calls will be directed to
your car-phone. As well, all your outgoing calls will go through your
payment plan. If your GSM phone breaks, you can go out and buy another
one anywhere, plug in your old SIM card, and vola, you are up and
running again. If you can get your hands on a used GSM phone for cheap
or free, you can plug the card in, instead of going to your provider
and having them sell you one of their overpriced models at full price.
Q: Where do GSM phones work?
A: In many countries around the world, but support in the USA is quite
bad from what I hear, and although Rogers claims to cover all of
Canada, that is hardly the case. You will find that when you travel in
the countryside, reception is often non-existent, especially out West
where I live. GSM and CDMA technologies are totally incompatible even
if they transmit in the same band. The encoding of the information is
different, so a GSM phone cannot talk to a CDMA network.
Q: Can you take a GSM phone travelling?
A: Depends if you have what is called a triple frequency phone. You
see, while Europe and Asia work on the 900/1800 MHz GSM band, for some
reason or other North America decided to use the 1900 MHz GSM band. I
am sure there is some dumb bureaucratic reason for it. In any case,
there are some phones that support all of those bands, so those are the
ones that will work all over the world, provided that GSM service is
available in that area. On the V66 I had to switch frequencies
manually, there is an option in the setup. After that you have two
choices: Either you can buy a local SIM card and plug it into your
phone, which gives you a local phone number with local rates, provided
your phone is not locked up, or you can just sign over your house to
your cellular phone company at home, because they will charge you an
arm and a leg. And hope that nobody phones your local number while you
are travelling, especially some phone marketer, because roaming phone
calls cost even more. And should you use your normal plan, even though
your phone will allow you to dial out and receive calls, chances are
you will not have access to either SMS or data services including Web
browsing via GPRS. I also found out that sending SMS internationally
doesn't work.
So, after acquiring the V66, I went home to my friendly Rogers people
to get a new Canadian SIM card for my new phone. I heard that you could
get one for $25. Well, turns out, that is only a replacement card if
you lost yours. How one can loose a SIM card without also loosing the
phone is a bit beyond me, but okay. So they were going to charge me
something like $50 for the new card. I gave the other phone to my wife
because she needed one anyway, and I wanted to use mine, but $50 just
for the card? So what I did was to simply take their cheapest phone,
which costs $0 on a two year plan, and then took the SIM card out of
that one and put it into my new one. And seeing that this other phone
was also a Motorola, along with that they gave me $100 worth of free of
Motorola accessories, so I bought a really nice hands free set that
cost $99.95. All in all, it was a good deal, as I get to use the phone
I like, I have a backup phone should my first one every break, of if I
want to take something cheap to the beach or hiking, and I get a hands
free set. Couldn't do that with CDMA.
Another thing that I learned about SIM cards that you buy while you are
on the road is that the minutes you buy are only good for a certain
amount of time. So if you buy a card that is good for six months, and
then you buy a small recharge before you leave, because you know you
will be back, that recharge might only be good for a month, even though
this is a six month card. So when I got back to Europe three month
later, my time had expired. And if you don't recharge your card within
the six months that it is good for, then it expires and becomes
worthless. The funny part is that, when you buy a little SIM card for,
say, 30 euros in Europe, you get 30 euros of talk time, and the SIM
card is free. So why does Rogers charge you $50 for it, and you don't
get anything but the card? And if you buy one from Fido, it's exactly
the same thing, the card costs you money, and then you start adding
usage to it after that. And even those will expire after a certain time
of not having been used. Hmmm, very strange. Maybe the fact that these
companies hold a virtual Monopoly has something to do with it?
As for unlocking a phone that is locked, I have never tried
to do it myself, as I have alternatives, but I
suppose it's pretty easy. It does cancel your warranty, of course, but
if this is a phone that is at the end of it's plan, I guess it won't
matter much. I mean, in a way I understand the whole thing from the
Rogers point of view, they give you a basically free phone, now they
want to get their money back from having you locked in. But as you are
on a plan, and there is pretty well no way you can get out of that
plan, why would it matter if you used the phone with somebody else's
card? You still have to pay your base charge for the one, two, or three
years, and the other SIM will charge you for your minutes as well. It
gets even better: They get to charge $20 a month but provide absolutely
no service for it. What a deal! So even though I can understand the
motivation, I don't believe in it. In fact, I am looking at the
different markets around the world, and I find that the ones that have
less of these Monopolies have a much larger market. You lessen the cost
of entry, then people are more likely to buy from you. I mean, why
charge somebody for your SIM card if they want to spend their hard
earned money to buy minutes on your network? Wouldn't you think that
people would flock to the network with the lowest cost of entry, i.e.
zero, and then spend lots of money talking? It is obvious that the
people in phone companies don't believe in the concepts of the free
market economy.
Cell phones, Palm PDAs, and bluetooth. The story continues
back to the beginning
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