SOS Help w/India BB in USA
 

Hello All,

This one has me stumped. A friend, living in India, has a Curve 8900 with Airtel. She is on a BIS plan, and has an Airtel SIM. Everything works perfectly, WiFi, EDGE, phone calls, SMS, BBM, etc.

This person is now visiting the USA. She turned off mobile network to avoid international roaming charges, was able to connect with a local WiFi network, and continue browsing, BBM, email, etc. This was all done through WiFi, as the Data Services while Roaming was turned off. All except phone calls and SMS, as one would expect since the mobile network was off, data services were off and all connectivity was through WiFi only.

The phone is unlocked, confirmed via MEPD where everything including Networks shows and Disabled.

She put in a T-Mobile SIM to make phone calls. That worked (she re-enabled the mobile network) and this enabled her to make calls. The SIM has a data plan (but NOT a Blackberry plan), and it was understood that she would only gain phone calls/SMS but not the other BB services.

So far, no surprises.

However, to avoid swapping SIM's constantly, it was decided to use the BB for email/BBM and a beater phone for local calls. She put the T-Mobile SIM in the junker phone (and it worked) and put the Airtel SIM back into the 8900. However, she now gets SOS, and cannot connect to the WiFi network.

After swapping SIM's a few times to ensure it was seated correctly, checking network and data services settings, along with resetting the router and deleting and re-setting up the WiFi, all to no avail, we looked at her service books and host routing table.

She still had her Airtel service books but seemed to also have some T-Mo service books of some kind. Provisioning was definitely there, along with her email service books, so they were not overwritten. Everything that was supposed to be there seemed to be present. Just that there was an 'extra' service book or two. Okay, fine -- we logged into her BIS account at airtel.blackberry.net and resent service books but to no avail (battery pulls in between of course).

Now here is where it gets interesting: upon checking her host routing table, it was blank. That explains it I thought, and so with the Airtel SIM in, we turned the mobile network and data services on, and did a Menu, Register Now. A message popped up stating that this would be done when she gets into network coverage. However, with the SOS (emergency calls only), the HRT is unable to get to her BB and so we are unable to get the HRT down. I am assuming, from looking at my Bold, that the Wi-Fi [60] entry is what allows her to connect to the BB infrastructure.

My conclusion thus far is that I need to get the HRT down but am unable to do so. SOS indicates a SIM problem, but I am assured it is oriented correctly and seated firmly. Replacing the Airtel SIM with the T-Mo SIM results in the SOS message going away and the phone is able to make/receive calls. We have tried padding the SIM to seat it firmly, that didn't work.

It's possible that the difference in GSM frequencies between North America and India play a part in the SIM but I don't think so, as the 8900 is a quad-band phone. It all seems to come back to the HRT which my best guess is what we need to get to her phone.

Any suggestions? I have troubleshot remotely about as best I can but I am not sure I could do much better even with the device in-hand. We didn't try a restore from backup (not sure if there is a backup at this point), and while I know I could restore service books from backup, I am not so sure that the same can be done for HRT's or if they are backed up at all.

Thanks in advance for any insight/suggestions.

Hey Klotar, I read it fully, but did I miss if the Airtel SIM has an International Data Plan on it, and/or International Voice Plan?

Does Airtel have roaming agreements here?

Thanks for the reply. I do not think that the SIM has an International Data Plan or International Voice Plan on it.

Airtel does list AT&T and T-Mobile as roaming partners on their webpage though.

It took until this morning to resolve the issue. In the time since the original post, after numerous attempts to send service books, register HRT, etc., even upgrading to a new OS, restoring service books, etc., nothing worked.

The cause of the problem was indeed that International Roaming was not enabled by Airtel (thanks for the tip, JS), but since she was already abroad, it was near impossible to arrange to have International Roaming enabled because 1) the account was relatively new, 2) they required a deposit, and 3) a written request had to be submitted.

Finally the roaming was enabled, and emails flooded in, service books [finally] arrived, wifi started working, network welcome message, etc. and SOS went away.

Of course, to avoid the high roaming charges, we now have mobile network off, data off and wifi on but all is working as expected.