[codyman]

I have a TMO 7290 and where I live I don't get any service. Came home from a trip the other day and forgot to turn the radio off (normally do that to save battery), left the 7290 by the window and heard it vibrate and beep (incomming e-mail). Thought it was pretty strange for it to be working at home (normally loose service about 8 miles from my house).

Look at the screen and saw network 310-890, GPRS and a couple of bars of signal.

Who the heck is 310-890?
What carrier is that?

Steve

[Snyder81]

Originally Posted by codyman

I have a TMO 7290 and where I live I don't get any service. Came home from a trip the other day and forgot to turn the radio off (normally do that to save battery), left the 7290 by the window and heard it vibrate and beep (incomming e-mail). Thought it was pretty strange for it to be working at home (normally loose service about 8 miles from my house).

Look at the screen and saw network 310-890, GPRS and a couple of bars of signal.

Who the heck is 310-890?
What carrier is that?

Steve

Not, sure but I pick it up in rural areas north of Spokane, WA. It's pretty common from my experience.

[John Clark]

It's Rural Cellular Corporation dba Unicel. They used to be part of Cellular One and made a switch a couple years ago to Unicel. I'm in Klamath Falls, Oregon and, thankfully, they have great service all over Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon. If they weren't here my T-Mobile BB would be worthless to me.

[jibi]

http://www.howardforums.com/showthre...hreadid=657335

[John Clark]

SWEET!! Thanks Jibi!! I searched all over the net one time looking for that info. All I could find was that 310 was US.

[dc/dc]

I caught this MNC once in rural Indiana, and thought it peculiar that my SIM did not know how to hash it out. I soon realized that it was not a preferred roaming partner and that they just had an open network. As soon as my phone could grab the weak T-M signal, it would. It was really annoying because Unicel had perfect coverage where I was, and I couldn't hold them because they were not a preferred partner.

[John Clark]

Originally Posted by dc/dc

I caught this MNC once in rural Indiana, and thought it peculiar that my SIM did not know how to hash it out. I soon realized that it was not a preferred roaming partner and that they just had an open network. As soon as my phone could grab the weak T-M signal, it would. It was really annoying because Unicel had perfect coverage where I was, and I couldn't hold them because they were not a preferred partner.

You should be able to hold it if you switch it to manual. That's what I do with my 7100t. They are on the 850MHz band. Signal isn't quite as clear but coverage is excellent. Also, according to the T-Mobile rep that our company uses, there is a roaming agreement between T-Mobile and Unicel. Your phone just always defaults back to TMobile if you don't lock it on manually.

[dc/dc]

Originally Posted by John Clark

You should be able to hold it if you switch it to manual. That's what I do with my 7100t. They are on the 850MHz band. Signal isn't quite as clear but coverage is excellent.

Yeah, it wouldn't do it... I was using a Nokia 1100 (850/1900) at the time, and switching to manual would cause me to lose my service altogether because it would find a T-M signal, drop the Unicel signal, and wait for me to pick again. This caused me to miss most calls. I finally just left it on automatic, and would manually pick Unicel when I needed to make a call.

[John Clark]

I've never had any luck manually switching networks with any Nokia phone. The BlackBerry was the first phone I ever had that would actually do it.

[codyman]

thanks guys - cleared that one up for me. All of a sudden I'm getting a weak (2 bars) signal at my house with GPRS when I never used to. TMO stops about 8 miles up the road.

I do have to have the berry by a window but it does seem to work.
(I'm in Deering NH btw - normally, the only signal here is VZW).

[bigdaadio]

I just got back from a "road trip" from Miami fl<=>No NY
Had to do some serious playing to get my 8700c on TMO to lock onto "unicel".
ie; yanked batt/soft boots-finnally after a bit it just CAME ALIVE... Does anybody knows how to get the BB to recognize a prf roam nework without such a fuss?
I was picking up EDGE but it wasnt as fast as TMO's or Cing's networks.

I also had the same problem in the Carolinas, On I-95 heading NorthI held a cingular signal throughout both states,heading north, but when coming back I had an "X "next to cing when doing a manual search. Had some carrier 310-xxx that I didnt recognize and GPRS. Pretty wild...
Anybody able to shine any light?