PBH / colombia (travelguide, pictures) / post

Blackberry coverage in Colombia..

I was with Sprint for many years and with my plans and kids on the accounts, the rates were very reasonable considering the service I received. THey also had me into a Tenet group plan which produced a 23 percent discount off of each and every bill. I became addicted to a blackberry last year and ended up with the World Edition 8830 from Sprint which is a CDMA phone with a built in unlocked GSM SIMM. I paid 20 bucks extra per month for their international data and email roaming plan since I spend about 20% of my time in Medellin. Well, this phone never worked outside the states and I made numerous calls to Sprint from Colombia and spent over 5 hours diagnosing problems with them. Then then opened up a trouble ticket with RIM that folks that make the Blackberry and after another hour of troubleshooting RIM tells me the problem is definately carrier related. Back to Sprint and while their 3rd tier support was friendly and they call me internationally on my Movistar phone to troubleshoot the Blackberry, nothing ever worked so they came to the conclustion the problem is with the carriers in Colombia. This was garbage since when I put my Movistar SIMM in the 8830 I get text message in English welcome to Colombia and Welcome to Movistar!

So after going around and around I cancelled service with Sprint at the end of my next billing cycle. They refused to wave the end of contract fees of 200 bucks a line regardless if their service did not work as advertised. I filed complaints with the FCC based on the grounds that Sprint is advertising products they dont have, specifically, they mention Movistar/Comcel and Tigo as roaming parters for Blackberry service in Colombia.

So now I am with a T-Mobile account with a Blackberry Curve -- which is a wifi phone and I have their international blackberry roaming plan along with Hotspot at home. Well, I must tell you this phone works flawlessly in Colombia and roams on all carriers, Movistar, Comcell and Tigo without any problems, My emails and messaging follows me just about everywhere here in Medellin and Bogota (when the aircraft gets to about 4000 feet the messages I missed start pouring in unlike in the states where the towers are designed to not provide service above 500 feet - at least in Florida).

THe coolest thing is the Hotspot at home, this Wifi phone connects with the Tmobile network over wifi so yes, you got it -- the phone works in Colombia just like at home with unlimited calling. messaging, what ever when attached in the UMA mode which is wifi and VoIP. Tmobile is the only carrier in the states with this phone. AT&T has a version that doesnt have wifi but has GPS. Speaking of GPS which my phone doesn't have, but it syncs up with Google maps here in Colombia from a triangulation of the cell towers and finds my position and brings up the map over the internet using local carriers. There maps are only accurate to 1700 meters which is not good for driving, but this is the first phone I had that could pull up maps in Colombia just like in the states. Its even possible to put google earth photos over the maps to see where I am here from the sky!!

Internationall calls from the states to Colombia were cheap with Spring since I paid 4 bucks a month and got a discounted rate of 16 cents a minute. Tmobile doesnt have a discounted plan and their fixed rate is $2.69 a min which I found out after a 75 buck call. I found a solution to this, its is Packet 8 mobile talk which installs on the blackberry and automatically intercepts any 011 or + calls and reroutes them over the packet 8 VoIP network. Calls to Colombia are a nickle a minute using MobileTalk. This is a cool service and is free.

Enough rambiling, I am going to see if I can buy a copy of Office 2007 over at the mall on 10th st and Las Vegas. I forgot the name of the mall but it is across the street from the Social Security building a couple of blocks from the Home Center!!

Nothing but the best -- larry at rn.org

By larryrn on Mar 6, 2008, 07:50 in Friendly Talkzone.

msaucey says on Mar 6, 2008, 08:44:

Thanks for sharing Larry... I know we've had various questions in trying to determine the best coverage, especially those hooked on BB....

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. - CS Lewis

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tlextoo says on Mar 6, 2008, 11:17:

Addicted to my BB Pearl.....Treo for work. BB wins hands down. I am on Tmobile as well but get a $1.64/minute rate? Calling cards s***, generally, pressing 1 for english, 1 to make a call...then getting busy signals when they aren't, etc. Great post, signing up now. Do you find that you are able to browse the net from almost anywhere, not necessarily a hotspot?

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larryrn says on Mar 7, 2008, 06:32:

Well, Last month I was here and surfed 8.143 megabytes and there was not a single charge on the bill. I think it could be related to the way the blackberry surfs the net. All of the browsing is proxyed to a server in Canada. Have you ever noticed when you go to many webpages, Expedia for example no matter where you are it defaults to Expedia.ca ? The webtraffic (like email) is all sent to the server in Canada and then out on the net from there, so you are actually going out on the new with a Canadian IP address.

I did get a bunch of charges for text messages when I wasn't connected via Wifi (UMA), but only 103 SMS messages were charged out of 1100 last month. Of course the primary reason I got the Blackberry is for email connectivity which is excellent.

I also carry a Prepaid Razor on Movistar with me for local calling - but when I am at a hotspot I don't mind using the blackberry via Wifi and paying a nickel a minute to make a local (international) call. In Medellin many places have wifi, McDonalds, Dominos, bakeries, restaurants, etc.

Larry

--- Larry Snyder - http://www.rn.org - Your Source for Online Nursing Education!

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larryste says on Mar 7, 2008, 07:19:

Thanks for the info. I have the curve from t-mobile too. I know about the international blackberry plan. I wonder if it would work in colombia. I wonder about hooking the blackberry up to computer and use it as a modem. I think it would be cool.

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larryrn says on Mar 7, 2008, 13:32:

yes, you can connect the 8320 curve blackberry to your laptop and surf as as a wifi eithernet connection or as a EDGE / GPRS wireless modem. It works just dandy but the actual transfer rate on GPRS is around 70kb and EDGE 134kb and is pretty much the same regardless of the carrier.

Larry

--- Larry Snyder - http://www.rn.org - Your Source for Online Nursing Education!

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