Tri-band phones seeing different networks

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.gsm (More info?)

In <1117658920.837279.92170@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> "grum" <graeme@templelocks.net> writes:

>One is a US T-Mobile (locked) Motorolla V180 supplied by my employer.
>It reports available networks as T-Mobile and AT&T.

>The second is a UK Orange (unlocked) SPV C500. It reports available
>networks as Cingular and AT&T.

I think the following should explain it. But if
I'm wrong, I'm sure plenty of people will correct me.

About five years ago Cingular had a physical network presence
in California, and t_mobile had theirs in NY. The two companies
made a handshake to allow each others customers to invisibly
cross-roam when in teh other's area.

In other words, if you were a cingular customer in NYC you'd
be on t-mobile (and vice versa).

The base station in NYC, though, would be putting out
a numerical ID that's associated with t-mobile.

So... if you had a multi band international phone you'd
either see the numerical ID or you'd see "t--mobile", depending
on whether the SIM "knew" the translation.

But... if you purchased a Cingular phone in the NYC
area, it would show "cingular", even though it was
using the t-mobile towers.

Same thing, in reverse, for California. A multi band
international phone over there would either give the
numerical ID or the Cingular name.

This would even be the case, *sometimes*, if you had
a t-mobile phone in Calif.

If the phone was specifically marketed by t-mobile in
California, they'd have programmed the SIM to translate
that Cingular ID number into the name "t-mobile".

But.... other phones wouldn't have that, so they'd
still show Cingular.

Now you've got a t-mobile branded and California
marketed phone, so it's seeing the (cingular) base
ID and is displaying it as t-mobile. The other phones
show the, for want of a better term, cleaner interpretation.

NOTE that this handshake arrangement is being phased
as each company builds out its own network, but
O don't know thje schedule.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.gsm (More info?)

On 1 Jun 2005 13:48:40 -0700, "grum" <graeme@templelocks.net> wrote:

>Hi - I hope someone here can help.
>
>I'm currently living in Southern California and at present have three
>phones. All are tri-band 900,1800,1900 handsets.
>
>One is a US T-Mobile (locked) Motorolla V180 supplied by my employer.
>It reports available networks as T-Mobile and AT&T.
>
>The second is a UK Orange (unlocked) SPV C500. It reports available
>networks as Cingular and AT&T.
>
>The third is a UK Orange (locked) Panasonic X70. It also reports the
>available networks as Cingular and AT&T.
>
>I'd like to use the T-Mobile sim in my C500, however when I do this it
>works, but only by roaming on AT&T or Cingular.
>
>Can anyone explain to me why 3 phones operating on the same bands pick
>up different networks. Am I missing something obvious? Is there
>anything I can do to get the C500 to pick up T-Mobile? Interestingly,
>when I travel to the US East Coast (DC area), the C500 picks up
>T-Mobile no problems.

T-Mobile in California uses the cingular network (still) though at
some future time cingular will be migrating to the old AT&T Wireless
network (since cingular bought AT&T Wireless) and cingular sold the
old network to T-Mobile and T-Mobile likely has not changed the
operator identification yet (likely because cingular is still
transitioning to the new network and has agreed with T-Mobile that
they can use their "legacy" network for three years if necessary.)
Bottom line is unless you have a recent EONS T-Mobile SIM you will
only see two networks cingular (310-17) and AT&T Wireless (now
cingular) (310-38.) In California and Nevada T-Mobile shared network
with cingular so if you have either an old VoiceStream SIM (or even
some T-Mobile SIMs) it will say cingular even if you're a T-Mobile
subscriber.
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Archived from groups: alt.cellular.gsm (More info?)

John Phillips Wrote:
> On 1 Jun 2005, at 13:48:40 [GMT -0700] (06:48:40 Thursday, 2 June 2005
> where
> I live) "grum" wrote:
> -
> Can anyone explain to me why 3 phones operating on the same bands
> pick
> up different networks. Am I missing something obvious?-
>
> The SIM card controls this; also the internal phone locking, if any.
>
> --
> hAS ANYONE SEEN MY cAPSLOCK KEY?

Yes, I agree. The phone may be telling porkies as some of the network
info may be flashed into the phone e.g. an old phone displays BT
Cellnet instead of O2. The other thing might be sensitivity of the
phone receiver to some frequencies (especially if you're at the edge of
a phone cell) and not others.
Cheers
Kevbert.


--
Kevbert