On Nov 29, 2005, at 11:48, Paul Hardy wrote:
> I changed to 3G to get global roaming from Japan to the UK & China.
> In my
> particular case, it wasn't a seamless experience:
>
> 1416 didn't work to pick up voice mail. Vodafone UK didn't know the
> answer,
> which turns out to be:
>
> 1) Dial +81-90-665-14170
> 2) Enter your mobile phone number followed by #.
> 3) Enter your network PIN followed by #.
>
> In other words, picking up voice mail is an international call to a
> number I
> wouldn't be expected to know. Also, throughout London, the phone would
> automagically roam across to Orange. Finally, my data service
> didn't seem to
> want to do its thing. So in my context, roaming was not as useful an
> experience as simply call forwarding to one of my other phones. In
> China, I
> could receive calls just fine but couldn't make them.
A lot depends on the carrier you're using while roaming. If you turn
off automatic carrier selection and manually select the local
Vodafone carrier, 157 calls, data communications, etc. should work
and are usually cheaper as well:
http://www.vodafone.jp/scripts/english/service_area/servicearea_list.jsp
Although many of the countries in the list above have multiple
carriers supporting data communications (Vodafone Live!), I found the
service can be flakey when using a non-Vodafone carrier. For example,
In France I could get mail with SFR (Vodafone) but not with Orange or
Bouygues Telecom.
We have never had a problem using Vodafone mobiles in China although
not all carriers support data communications. Are you using a 802SE?
If you are, it looks like you're going to have problem there:
http://www.vodafone.jp/scripts/english/service_area/network.jsp
> I note incoming visitors tend to roam onto Foma, and everything
> works as
> advertised.
>
> So is Foma any better in terms of worldwide usability? I'm desperately
> hanging on for number portability to arrive, but the fingers are
> getting
> numb.
There is little difference in the global service area between the two
but Vodafone is cheaper and because it usually has a local presence,
offers better support and services. Docomo's only roaming FOMA mobile
is the N900ig.
Kyle
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Received on Wed Nov 30 05:03:07 2005