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Last Updated September 2006

My old dilemma with my Verizon LG VX4500 phone which constantly reboots in one particular zone/cell in NH. Click here to read all about it.

SUBSCRIPTION STATUS:

Cingular

in early March 2005 I bought a used Palm Treo 600 Unlocked GSM phone. I now use this phone for my Cingular service. See down below for the photos.

I had a Siemens S56 World Phone (GSM/TDMA dual band; GAIT phone) for some time through work. It has a local US calling plan plus international roaming and international dialing enabled.

I have found local GSM coverage to be good. I now have service at my house thanks to a Cingular cell site very close by.

International roaming works great! I'm glad it's not my phone bill, because at about $1.00 a minute for roaming at any time of the day or night, and with alot of business calls, it adds up quick!

Pleased with the Cingular service in NH and MA.

Have not traveled much in the USA with it, but use it overseas and it works very well there.

My trip to the UK in mid March allowed me to make use of the Palm Treo Unlocked GSM functions. I The phone worked great on three out of the 4 GSM networks in England - Orange, O2, and Vodafone. The Cingular roaming agreement prefers O2 as the primary and Vodafone as the 2nd. I did have trouble with people calling and me missing the call (not being able to answer the phone on time). In these cases, the phone did NOT go into voice mail for the caller. The phone would not work (send or receive calls) when I attached to the T-Mobile network, although it did let me register on the T-Mo network.

Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless with America's Choice 1 Family plan, 2 phones (one for me and one for my better half).

400 peak minutes (shared between the phones)

Unlimited Nights and Weekend (9:01pm - 5:59am)

IN network calling for primary phone, unlimited family calling for 2nd phone

Mobile Web (I use it off peak only) using a WAP gateway (so I do not pay VZW for their WAP gateway, saving $5.00/mo).

National Access Minutes Only Used. What a beautiful fringe benefit of these plans. I do have the mobile office kit for my phone. Internet access on demand! I use the NA feature a few times a year.

20% corporate discount through my work.

Average monthly bill after all taxes and surcharges: $62.00

I subscribed to VZW in July 2002 after years of using U.S. Cellular. I grew tired of the lack of good roaming plans from US Cellular so I thought I would try VZW. My wife and I flew to Florida to help some friends drive all the way up to Northern New Hampshire. I used my VZW phone much of the 1500 miles we drove, and the most remarkable thing, was that with the America's Choice Plan, I was not roaming with the phone except for about a 50 mile stretch in North Eastern Pennsylvania (on the NY border). Many times I was in "Extended Network" territory, but never did I have a problem with digital service, nor with the Browser (WAP) capability to access my email. There was a time during the early evening when one of our moving trucks had a breakdown and I had to use the phone alot. This was in the northern part of North Carolina on the VA border. Even though I had a full strength signal, the phone dropped many calls and I got many "we're sorry, but all circuits are busy at this time" messages, the most important calls got thru when they needed to so we could get help.

I'm a satisfied customer of VZW and their America's choice plan if you travel a little or alot. It's peace of mind to know you can go virtually anywhere in the US and not pay roaming fees, and still have nights and weekends free!

Also, their #MIN feature and their web-based My Account minutes usage gives pretty good estimate of minutes used during the current billing cycle. Watch out if you frequent an VZW area that uses a different billing server, as your minutes will not be updated in real-time using My Account or the #646 feature.

Vodafone

The International Parent Company of Verizon Wireless (they own something like 51% of the outstanding shares of VZW).

I have a Sendo S330 phone (see photo below) which I use with the "Pay as you Talk" prepaid plan. A decent prepay plan, with attractive rates, and superior coverage throughout the UK (and in other countries where 900 and 1800Mhz GSM is present). No wonder their network is great - they own 51% of Verizon Wireless

I simply Top-Up my minutes each time I need to when I travel to the UK. I now have this phone registered with Vodafone Online, with a UK mailing address, and my credit card attached to the account, so I can Top Up online anytime from anywhere in the world as long as I have internet access. Way cool.

The best deal with Vodafone Pay as you Go is that the minutes do not expire for 6 months after you purchased them as long as the phone is idle. Now that I have an unlocked Treo 600, I can pop the Vodafone SIM in and send a text message or make a 1 minute call, and extend the 6 months period.
Considering I travel there 2 to 3 times within 6 months, this is not an issue, but I also usually use up all my minutes before returning anyway's, so it all works out.

The week prior to me leaving for my first trip to the UK in 2004, I got an email from a gent who was asking me questions about this/my website. He was in the Massachusetts area here from the UK - England specifically. I told him "what a coincidence" - that I was traveling to England the following week. So, needless to say we got into quite the exchange of email for the remainder of that week. He gave me huge amounts of information regarding using a wireless phone in England. In summary he said:

Go to the nearest Woolworth's. Purchase their cheapest phone (which was the Sendo S330) for about £29. I bought two of them, one for me and one for my wife. I then added Top-Up minutes to each phone and we are all set to go within minutes.

Cheap but great little phone. I have never dropped a call in the UK (except for going through some of the London tunnels where I cannot believe they don't have service!!!!). Works great everywhere. The phone does not have alot of bells a whistles, but it functions rock solid for voice, and that is what I need it for!

Previous Wireless Carriers subscribed to:

U.S. Cellular (NH)	I'm was a very happy customer with USCC. Their local plans were great as was their coverage in NH. When you started to roam (like in Mass.) with the Dual-Band Tri-Mode TDMA phones, on the Cingular Wireless Network, I often experienced problems with feature services, like Caller ID not working, and SMS messaging sporadic behavior. I got so frustrated with these problems, I eventually pulled the plug. They had poor roaming agreements with other carriers outside of New England which also got me very angry.
Cingular (AT&T) Wireless	Not at all impressed with their TDMA network when I was previously subscribed, but their GSM network is alot better.
Omnipoint (VStream, T-Mobile)	Great services and features if you live under a highway bridge (stay close to the highways). I learned so very much about RF from using their service, I can't thank them more. For some reason, their RF signals are so much more directed and subject to fade than other carriers in the same frequency band (1800-1900Mhz). They must do something strange with their array RF patterns that Cingular and Sprint PCS do not. Nonetheless, if they had a tower in my home area (in the woods), I would someday sign back up with them as the undoubtedly have some of the best price to minutes plans in the USA.

Current Phone For Cingular:

Palm Treo 600 Screen Shot Photo 1

Why did I wait so long to get one of these?
I really don't know. It must have been the cost. Brand new without a wireless contract, these babies are over $500. You can now get them with contracts for under $300.
Want an unlocked one? You can get them off of EBAY. I lucked out and got this one from I guy I work with who upgraded to the Treo 650 (with BlueTooth). The 600 has no BT, but does have the Unlocked Quad-Band (850, 900, 1800, 1900Mhz) GSM phone, the Palm OS 5 PDA, a VGA resolution camera, and it also plays MP3's!!
Truly a work horse. Takes a bit of getting used to all the crazy functions, but after a few weeks now of owning it, I'm truly loving it. Now if I can get Cingular to stop dropping all my calls while I'm driving (it's not the phone, it does it with the Siemens S56 too; it's their network).
I want a Treo 700 now!

I also have Siemens S56 World Phone. It's a work horse. The menu's and features could be a bit better, but, hey, it's a work phone! This ojne is retired at the moment. No photo available.

Current Phones For Verizon:

LG VX8300, which is probably the best phone I have ever owned, 2nd only to the LG VX 4500 which is simply the easiest, most intuititive phone ever made, IMHO.

no photo available yet

LG-VX 8300

This phone is great with both EV-DO Rev A and 1XRTT.

no photo available yet

LG-VX 4500

The speakerphone and voice activated commands make this phone really cool. It's a digital only phone (850 and 1900 Mhz bands).

My old Motorola T720c (with the assisted GPS for Enhanced 911 Support) is now no longer my wife's and I have retired it, the v60c and the v120c phones and have them as backups just in case.

Click to enlarge photo

Click to enlarge photo

Click to enlarge photo

Pretty happy with this phone. It does have FAIR performance for RF (receiver sensitivity basically stinks and it drops calls alot). Without an external antenna mounted on my car, I cannot hold calls in fringe areas (unlike the v60 phone [below] I had previously which worked great in fringe areas without an external antenna).

Nice features are the BREW Enabled (Java) capabilities with the Verizon Get It Now service offering downloadable applications with the 1XRTT bursts speeds (up to 164Kb/s). Although their download apps pretty much are useless (I'm no fan of ring tones nor games), the one KILLER APP for me is the real time weather radar with animated precipitation. For $2.99 a month, I use the MyCast subscription service. You put in the area code or city/town name, and it will download the real time radar map for the vicinity. It downloads the last 3 15 minute interval maps and makes them animated in color on your screen. VERY HANDY for an outdoor person (and really handy when camping, provided you have Verizon Digital service where your camping). This summer I got saved two times camping - one in central NH (Bristol to be exact), and the other in Wallingford VT. I was able to see the rain and thunder coming well in advance right towards us and was able to prepare the campsite accordingly with plenty of time to spare.

The same Field Test Mode enable/disable key sequence works with this phone and there are a few new screens in Field test Mode for the Global Positioning System (GPS) chip to show you which satellites your attached to, your LAT/LON position, etc. However, the GPS does not work without the PDE (Positioning Determining Entity) present from your wireless provider. There's a good thread on GPS and E911 related to the T720 phone (and applicable to all aGPS phones) located at this link:

GPS support with the T720 Phone

For help with field test mode and this phone, see the notes at:

Motorola Field Test Mode and CDMA

Current Phone For Vodafone:

Sendo S330. It's a cute little plasticy disposable phone. Works great, just don't drop it!!!!

Sendo S330

The phone is chinsy - plastic, but for £30,00, it's great!
It has a ton of great games on it (for free), and I do like it's smart SMS capability. It works only on 900 and 1800 GSM networks. The SIM from this phone works great in my Unlocked Palm Treo 600 both here in the USA and abroad.

Ancient retired phones: Motorola v60c, v120 (The kids now use these as toys!)

Motorola v60c Picture Closed

Motorola v60c Picture Opened

My Motorola v60c. Very happy with this phone. It's the best phone I have owned to date. Knock on wood, never any problems with it. It has excellent sensitivity in fringe areas, and is typically able to hold calls much better (than my wife's v120 phone).

I have a leather carry case with attached belt clip that I use to keep it protected as well as secured to my belt buckle. I mainly use it in vibrate mode as to not offend anyone nearby!!

The bottom picture is of the phone opened up, and the display is showing information while it's in Field Test Mode.

For Field test Mode descriptions for this model and other Motorola Models, see the link at:

Motorola Field Test Mode and CDMA

Previously Owned Phones:

Many many many. Most of them are still sitting in a drawer at home. I also have a Nextel phone - a Motorola i1000Plus.

NOTE: I am not selling any of my older phones.

PHONE BRAND / MODEL

DESCRIPTION

Siemens S12 GSM Phone

With OmniPoint's name on the front, this phone was the best GSM phone I ever used. I had several other Ericsson GSM models but I was never happy with any of them.

Loved OmniPoints network. I went to Florida and traveled around that state (from Boca to Orlando) and have coverage the whole way (roaming on Ariel's network in the Orlando area). I was able to call from South Florida to home and have it part of my regular minutes. Nice! This was back in 1998-1999.

Ericsson KF788 TDMA

Great little phone for free. My wife and I got one each when we renewed our US Cellular contract. Worked everywhere I went, on both bands and in all three modes.

Not the best for receiver sensitivity - would tend to drop to analog much too often especially in fringe areas.

Didn't perform handoff's between bands, but I suppose that's as much a function of the base station as it is the mobile's responsibility.

Battery life was short. I got maybe a day's worth of IDLE standby use, and much less if I used it allot (maybe 70 minutes of talk time on either band, digital mode).

Motorola Timeport

Dual Band Tri-Mode TDMA

The best overall phone I have used. Nice big display, long battery life, ergonomically perfect with it's exact earpiece shape and smooth feel. Takes a beating and keep on working.

Used this phone allot in Field Test Mode and learned alot from the TDMA carriers in my area.

I gave this phone to a friend who has been using it now for some time. US Cellular actually allowed him as a new subscriber to activate this TDMA clunker. Not so anymore these days.

Ever see the OmniPoint Parrot?

GENERAL:

Number of years in the wire line/wireless & data networking industries: 18+

Amateur Radio Enthusiast: For over 21 years; Click here for my dusty ham radio website.

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no photo available yet LG-VX 8300	This phone is great with both EV-DO Rev A and 1XRTT.
no photo available yet LG-VX 4500	The speakerphone and voice activated commands make this phone really cool. It's a digital only phone (850 and 1900 Mhz bands).

PHONE BRAND / MODEL	DESCRIPTION
Siemens S12 GSM Phone	With OmniPoint's name on the front, this phone was the best GSM phone I ever used. I had several other Ericsson GSM models but I was never happy with any of them. Loved OmniPoints network. I went to Florida and traveled around that state (from Boca to Orlando) and have coverage the whole way (roaming on Ariel's network in the Orlando area). I was able to call from South Florida to home and have it part of my regular minutes. Nice! This was back in 1998-1999.
Ericsson KF788 TDMA	Great little phone for free. My wife and I got one each when we renewed our US Cellular contract. Worked everywhere I went, on both bands and in all three modes. Not the best for receiver sensitivity - would tend to drop to analog much too often especially in fringe areas. Didn't perform handoff's between bands, but I suppose that's as much a function of the base station as it is the mobile's responsibility. Battery life was short. I got maybe a day's worth of IDLE standby use, and much less if I used it allot (maybe 70 minutes of talk time on either band, digital mode).
Motorola Timeport Dual Band Tri-Mode TDMA	The best overall phone I have used. Nice big display, long battery life, ergonomically perfect with it's exact earpiece shape and smooth feel. Takes a beating and keep on working. Used this phone allot in Field Test Mode and learned alot from the TDMA carriers in my area. I gave this phone to a friend who has been using it now for some time. US Cellular actually allowed him as a new subscriber to activate this TDMA clunker. Not so anymore these days.