Lucky me, I have a bunch of our top level execs over in the U.K. for a trade show. They have Cingular 7290's and are able to get data service (emails) but no voice or SMS service.

We've reset the devices, they are getting full GPRS, verified with Cingular that intl plans are still active on the accounts, and issue occurs regardless of whether we manually select O2, Orange, T-Mobile, or Vodafone networks.

Anyone else roaming w/Cingualr without issues in the UK?

Thanks,

Chad

First Reponse:
We have an update on issue. The problem with this one is in
how the international translations are being handled. Cingular has
requested some changes be made to how our international IMSI
translations are handled for our legacy blue customers. Some of these
changes have not been completed by all the parties that need to make the
change. The problem being experienced currently will affect subscribers
with IMSI ranges beginning with the following:

31038009xxxxxxx.

Second Response
An update. Not very good news to report at the moment. The "fix" that the STP team put in place yesterday, broke a great deal more than it fixed, and it didn't solve the problem for this customer either. The "fix" has been rolled back.

Next steps -

Cingular's carrier relations team has made an urgent announcement to all of our international roaming partners to make the translation changes we asked for. Cingular originally announced the need for these changes to be completed over a month ago with a deadline of July 17th. Some carriers have not implemented that change which is contributing to this issue.

Tomorrow we will be getting a data file from both of Cingular's SCCP providers. (companies that sit in between Cingular and our international partners for signalling conversion purposes) This data file will give us an idea of how many carriers have made the changes we need them to make. If enough of our partners have made this conversion, we will ask our SCCP providers to introduce some tranlations changes in their network that will fix this issue for this customer and others.

If not enough carriers have made the change by tomorrow morning, we will not ask our SCCP providers to make any changes because it will do more harm than good for our customer base. (i.e it will negatively impact more subscribers than it will help) At that point we will begin to target the specific offending carriers and drive them to make the changes. Cingular will continue to do this until we have evidence that our largest international partners have made the changes. At that time, we will have our SCCP providers introduce the changes, which will clear up the problem for this customer. (and others who are affected)

My team is staying very close to all developments related to this issue and are pushing hard to get it corrected for our customers as soon as possible. The moment I have more information I will share it with all.

Third Response
We've seen a favorable response to our requests for assistance in making the requested translations changes from our roaming partners. In addition to asking all carriers to make sure they implement the changes, we also targeted specific carriers who we had evidence indicating the changes had not been made yet. Hopefully this trend continues.

We haven't yet received the data that we asked for from our SCCP providers so we have escalated that within our company and to the providers management.

Fourth Response
We received the data we were awaiting from only one of our SCCP providers. The results are exactly opposite what we had hoped to see. It appears a very large portion of our partners have not made the changes we have requested.

Follow up to the individual requests that were sent to carriers yesterday have already been sent. The data that we received didn't specify which carriers were sending the traffic incorrectly, so we're asking for that information now as well. (it only reported volume) When we get the name of the specific offending carriers we will immediately step up our escalation process with the biggest offenders.

I'll send another update by noon tomorrow.

I'll post more as I hear

Thanks Todd for posting the information (from a whole row of cubicles away)