Suddenly 7100g and 7290 can't get wireless signal

[graystrickland]

All of a sudden, my 7100g and my co-worker's 7290 can't get a wireless signal. We do hard reboots. Nothing. For several minutes, the phones say "searching for network" then "no service." Occaisionally they say "SOS" where it should say "GPRS" but most of the time, it just has an "X" there.

BB support says it is hardware failure, but it strikes me as odd that two phones would fail at the same time.

Any thoughts? (Besides buying new 8700s?)

[Texas_Traveler]

Since you mentioned a 7100g I am assuming you are using Cingular.

Cingular is integrating its GSM networks (Old ATT Wireless and Cingular pre-merger) in several areas right now, and some have reported issues like you are seeing. This is hopefully a temporary situation.

Where city are you in?

[graystrickland]

I am in Tulsa, OK. I spent over an hour fighting the Cingular phone maze to get 5 minutes with the real Blackberry support people. The BB tech kept putting me on hold to check on something before pronouncing my 7100 dead. I thought of network issues, but we know other people in this market who are not having the same issues.

[akfirecop]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

He says its a hardware issue...meaning the phone?

Have you tried to reinstall the OS?

I don't think I would give up the ghost just yet...

[wibbly]

Sounds like a network issue. Or maybe your provider has disconnected your service! I guess you can't make calls.

- Borrow another phone and see if your SIM works in that
- Move to a different location (preferably as far away as possible from your current cell site) and see if it works from there...

[mymitsu3kgt]

If it was a 7100g and a 7290, doesn't that mean that you're talking about two different networks, Cingular and TMobile? If two different networks experienced outages at the same time, I would think there was a problem with your nearby tower.

[graystrickland]

akfirecop: He says its a hardware issue...meaning the phone?

Yes, he says that my phone is broken.

akfirecop: Have you tried to reinstall the OS?

Yes. I used javaloader to wipe the 7100 clean, then reinstalled the latest OS

wibbly: Borrow another phone and see if your SIM works in that

I tried that. My sim works fine in other phones.

wibbly: Move to a different location (preferably as far away as possible from your current cell site) and see if it works from there...

I tested it as I drove over half the state Memorial Day weekend.

mymitsu3kgt: If it was a 7100g and a 7290, doesn't that mean that you're talking about two different networks, Cingular and TMobile?

Both of us (me and my buddy who has a 7290) are Cingular customers. And for what it's worth, I pulled my old 7290 out, charged it, installed my sim and it's working just fine.

[mymitsu3kgt]

gotchya

[akfirecop]

wow...that seems wierd...

guess your phones are T.U...get the 8700!!!

[EricaJ1074]

I had this happen to a friend who recently bought a used T-Mobile 7290. She used different SIM cards from other phones, bought a used 7100t which ended up having the same problem (she recently sold it when the 7290 started working again), etc. It ended up being a problem with one of the towers in her area and a bad SIM card.

I also had this problem last year with my first 7100t. It just dropped dead (the radio that is) and I had it replaced. So it's a combination of things that can cause the problem.