Ground Effect

After having my Tilt in the New York area and growing into it's features decided to visit my mother in a nearby state, hoping to receive my emails and use my tilt as a modem...only to find out that Att only has phone service and no umts in the towers...Prior to purchase I asked if data service was carried in that zipcode and was told that it was, after arriving no data,no live search, no emails.....
only to be rudely "tilted" and the ball rolls down the hole.....As a piece of advice to all potential data plan people if you need data currently the Blackberry uses a network more widely supported for at least the next year if not longer. I love the phone but am struggling with it's lack of availability of use (data wise) abroad.

DSmithZ28

When you say no data in that there was no Edge? I thought at least GPRS was available everywhere...

Ground Effect

Well after coming back from Pa. and talking to The store rep where I got the phone and then ATT Technicians I get two completely different stories,

Story 1 : Phone service and data service are two different animals and in the region I was in although having two bars of reception for phone it does not have data capability at least for 6 months maybe a year.

Story 2: Phone service and data service are basically the same transmission over the same tower, as long as you have phone you should have data. the next time you're in that area call ATT on a different phone and they will run a diagnostic.

I know that area does not have 3g, I'm assuming the phone was picking up trying to pick up Edge.....my question is does ATT have phone towers without data service on those towers? One rep says yes another says no..
the other question is where does umts fit in?

CodeBubba

I ran into a similar issue with Nextel a few years ago. (Not data vs. phone - but misrepresentation of service). My house is located right on the fringe area of most cell carriers. I asked them specifically if I would have service out at the house and was assured that, yes, there was coverage out there. Aside from the other problems I had with Nextel (billing screw-ups, etc) I never got good service at the house.

These sales people do NOT know "beans-from-buckshot" when it comes to their service. All they know is they need to sell you a phone. It's like the healthcare system - YOU need to do your own research to make sure you don't get "stuck".

-CB

Ground Effect

It's funny that you said that, Nextel is the service I gave up on. Was still wondering if we have any phone system experts out there that would know of the dilemma I was talking about? Specifically phone/data availability?