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Published by Ewan on Tuesday 23rd October 2007, 17:20 | Related | Filed Under

Remember I bought a pay-as-you-go sim card from AT&T last week? Although it was a painful process, I was delighted to have my own ‘local’ service to use.

I was deeply, deeply unimpressed when I switched it on at London Stansted airport and found zero signal. AT ALL.

There must be some ‘enable me for international roaming’ thing that needs to be ticked. Arse.

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There Are 9 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Jeb on 23 October 2007:

    Ewan,

    Unfortunately prepaid ATT sim cards won’t work outside of the US.

  2. Comment by Ricky on 23 October 2007:

    You guessed it! By default, the International Roaming capability (as well as international dialling) is disabled. While this is seen as an inconvenience to you, it’s there so that people don’t get surprise massive roaming bills.

    In the US, no roaming is considered part of the package. Thus, people assume that if they are able to get a signal, they’re using their regular included minutes. The idea of having to pay extra for minutes in certain geographical areas is foreign to most Americans, even in a different country.

    A quick phone call to Customer Service before you leave on a trip and they will enable it for you. I did this recently when I was in London for Nokia’s Go Play event, though thankfully I didn’t need to use my phone before I was able to get a T-Mobile SIM in London. The roaming rates are ridiculous!

  3. Comment by Jeb on 23 October 2007:

    Ricky,

    I called ATT and they implicitly said that there is no way to use a prepaid sim out of the country. Are you talking about a prepaid or a postpaid account? They could have also just not wanted to deal with me and that’s why they told me NO.

    Jeb

  4. Comment by Daniel Gibbons on 23 October 2007:

    Hi Ewan,
    I feel terrible that Erik and I pushed you into buying a useless SIM! Not to mention putting you through the AT&T “What’s a SIM?” shopping experience.

  5. Comment by Ewan on 23 October 2007:

    Gibbons! You led me, a poor unsuspecting foreigner, to the AT&T store! ;-) They sold me duff goods ;-)

    (Ricky: That’s a sensible AT&T policy, actually)

  6. Comment by Jeb on 24 October 2007:

    I think it’s rediculous that you can’t ask ATT to turn on internaional roaming and then burn thorough your 30 minutes in 10 sms or 10 minutes, but to give you the option is the key…

  7. Comment by Ricky on 24 October 2007:

    I stand corrected. Post-paid accounts can have International Roaming enabled, but it would appear that prepaid cannot. I’ve never actually used a prepaid SIM in the US, so I’m not 100% familiar with the policy changes with them.

  8. Comment by Amir on 25 October 2007:

    Pre-paid doesn’t even have the same coverage as does post-paid INSIDE the U.S., leave alone international roaming.

  9. Comment by Valerie on 27 January 2008:

    Ewan,

    Check this out: http://www.united-mobile.com - I just discovered it. What do you think?

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