Thread: Russian SIM cards in Blackberry phone?

Has anybody tried to use a Russian mobile SIM card in your Blackberry phone when traveling there? Usually, I buy a Russian SIM card there (Beeline or Tele2, etc) and use the Russian # while I am there. However, on my last trip in Piter, the SIM would not work in my Motorola RAZR, which I found odd. Curious if any have had the experience of taking their Blackberry to Russia? Thanks.

I had a tele2 sim card in my 8300 in piter last summer and it worked fine.

Originally Posted by PentatonicDream

Has anybody tried to use a Russian mobile SIM card in your Blackberry phone when traveling there? Usually, I buy a Russian SIM card there (Beeline or Tele2, etc) and use the Russian # while I am there. However, on my last trip in Piter, the SIM would not work in my Motorola RAZR, which I found odd. Curious if any have had the experience of taking their Blackberry to Russia? Thanks.

Did you ask your customer service in the US if the phone was blocked? I have a Motorola with AT&T Motorola, I knew it was blocked so I couldn't use it with a Russian SIM card when I went last January... The reason: they block phones only to be used with that company. So I used the international roaming which is really really really expensive.

C

[quote=Cesar]
Did you ask your customer service in the US if the phone was blocked? I have a Motorola with AT&T Motorola, I knew it was blocked so I couldn't use it with a Russian SIM card when I went last January... The reason: they block phones only to be used with that company. So I used the international roaming which is really really really expensive.

C

you can pay to have the phone unblocked, its not a problem

It's not just as simple as making sure the phone is unblocked. Different mobiles have different features and these need to be supported by the network. If your phone has features that the network doesnt support then it might work with those features disabled or non-operative, but it's just as likely that it won't work at all. Not all models of phone are available on all networks even within one market, l never mind abroad.

The basic functions like speaking can work just by changing the SIM card if the phone is unblocked, and if it supports the frequency used by the other company (my phone supports four different frequencies, two of them used by Beeline and MTS - 900MHz and 1800 MHz).

Of course, you can unblock your phone. They, as far as I know, do it for free at AT&T. However, when I went to the store they didn't even know what unblocking a mobile phone was (it's basically entering a code and that's it) so I had to travel using the roaming and I couldn't used the SIM card that they gave me in Moscow.

C

My BB is with at&t, too. You can call customer service for the unlock code, they'll give it to you if you've been with them for a certain amount of time, how much I don't remember, three or four months I think. The procedure as I remember it is a bit convoluted, you have to fax something in and then they email the code back to you in a few days.

If you don't meet their requirements and you still want to unlock it you can usually get the codes for 10 or 20 bucks from sellers on ebay. There are other websites that will purport to sell you the codes, too, but ebay is kinda nice because the seller feedback is a good indication of how legit the seller is.

With the tele2 sim card voice calls and sms within Russia worked fine for me, I didn't try anything else and in fact turned off the data services on the phone in case they did something in the background that would have drained my balance.