[eander315]

I just returned from a two-week trip to several cities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. I also passed through Paris and tested the phone there. I had about 50% success getting my AT&T Bold to connect to any functioning data services by switching it to manual network selection. Scanning for networks would sometimes run indefinitely, and usually took several minutes on average to produce a list. Success was about equal in all cities and even by location within the cities. I connected to many different vendor networks but was not able to discern a pattern. For instance Orange would allow a 3G data connection in one location but fail to work an hour later at a different location in the same city. The Bold would only find a functioning connection on automatic mode about 25% of the time. Basically the AT&T Bold was unusable as a data device. I do no have an international data plan and was paying full roaming charges.

Unfortunately I did not have a chance to contact AT&T international support during the trip, so I was not able to further troubleshoot the issue. I was very frustrated using the manual workaround, and am confident that my users will not find the performance acceptable. I have already had complaints from a couple of people who have traveled overseas and missed important emails.

AT&T really needs to research this a little better. I don't believe that only a small number of people are experiencing problems, and in any case the problem should be accurately identified and rectified without forcing each end user to contact international support while they are overseas.

As it stands today, there is no way I can recommend an AT&T Bold to anyone who expects to use it anywhere outside North America. Given the AT&T response so far, I would not be surprised if the Bold reaches end-of-life through obsolescence before the issue is resolved.