Hello all,
I've scoured the site for info on what is happening to my 7780 on Cingular and couldn't find anything, so I am going to post.

I left Atlanta 8:25 am Tues morning on a flight to Denver. Accidentally left the BB on. Landed in Denver and all I had was SOS for network.

It's now Thursday. I've been on the phone with Cingular several times. Pulled out the battery several times. Got a new sim card. The BB still doesn't hit their tower.

Question is, is there any kind of test I can do to rule out a device problem other than putting my sim in another phone? Has anyone else had this problem?
And, what are my options of getting it repaired?
Thanks in advance!

You could try upgrading the firmware in your device?

There is another Cingular/SOS thread I just saw - but in Southern California.

This happened to me once with Rogers while flying from Toronto to Orlando.

Rogers had to reset my device on their network. Apparently cellular networks block devices that try to connect to so many towers at once. At that altitude, your phone could be in range of hundreds of cell towers using the same frequency for hundreds of miles--which obviously interferes with channel reuse throughout a large portion of a network.

GSM PC4 800MHz devices (including the 7780), which can transmit up to 2 watts, can worsen the issue.

This is the REAL reason they don't want you to use your cell phone/blackberry on a plane. Interference with navigation systems is bunk.

When in doubt reboot, power off, remove battery and replace battery. This usually works for me most of the time. If it does not then you have to make that dreaded phone call to Cingular and hope that you can find the one person there that understands the BB.

SOS will happen when you've roamed out of Cingular and into another GSM network that Cingular does not have a roaming agreement with.

An example.

I have a At&t 7780 phone here. I go into the "Wrench" and select "Network" then change it to "Manual" and hit "Scan"

I am presented with

* AT&T Wireless
* Cingular Wireless
* T-Mobile

AT&T gives me 4 bars of service
Cingular gives me 2 bars of service
T-Mobile gives me SOS

Since Cingular's network is so much larger than T-Mobile, they don't feel the need to have a roam into agreement with them. However T-Mobile does have agreements with Cingular that lets them roam into Cingular when connectivity is poor. But they don't do this everywhere.

911 access is a requirement for all providers, so that is why you get the SOS when you roam out of Cingular.

There have been problems with Cingular since Wednesday afternoon. The SOS is one of them. I had been getting this on my office and there is no Tmobile signal at all here. Cingular has acknowledged since my first calls to them on Wednesday that there have been major problems. BTW....I still get SOS on occasion, but a Wireless off/on generally clears it.

Upadate...Landed in Atlanta Thurs nite and fired up the BB and it worked fine. Something is screwy in Denver/Col Springs area. This is the second week that it does not work. I brought my old cell phone and put in the sim card and it worked fine. ARRGH

This is the reason my company ran from AT&T/Cingular to T-Mobile. We just didn't want to deal with all of these issues on top of their already poor service/coverage in S. Florida. I guess they really are "raising the bar"...those bars may include customer complaints, coverage issues, system downtime, billing issues...

Ok, enough picking on them, I'm sure they'll be a decent carrier in a few years when they complete the network and billing migrations.

I have a co-worker in the Fargo area who drove into town and began getting the SOS message at 1:30 on Wednesday and it has been like that since. Any ideas for that area?

Third week in a row still not working in Denver/Col Springs area. Unit works fine in ATL. Cingular support has no idea what is going on.