Eric,
I got to use a prior model of Vodafone made by NEC this summer when travelling to Europe, and thought it worked brilliantly. It did not, actually support regular e-mail in Japan, ONLY SMS, meaning that to send an e-mail to another mobile phone user, you could only enter their phone number, not an e-mail address. It basically only worked if the receiver was a J-Phone or Tsuka customer. It also did not have sha-mail, though it has videophone features.
The new phone has MMS roaming, meaning something very like sha-mail. However, at this point I am not totally sure of the data roaming agreements that Vodafone KK and other European OpCos have. I know that this will improve if it is not currently perfect (yes, I actually work for Vodafone KK).
As far as cost goes, as an employee and pilot use of the NEC model, I didn't have to pay anything. I do know that the phones are all SIM locked. There is one model, made by Nokia, though, that is not locked, and supports a wide variety of SIMs. You have to buy the phone from a dealer, however, and then go to a Vodafone shop and purchase the SIM separately. It is not a cheap handset, either, because we are not subsidising it, and I believe it is about 70,000-80,000 yen. Neither the NEC model nor the Nokia model are tri-band GSM, either, so they will basically not work on the 1900 mHz networks in North America. The new Sanyo model due out in December IS tri-band, and a very cute little package to boot.
Hope this was reasonably helpful.
Best,
Nik Frengle
Eric Bossieux <eric@tti-jpn.com> wrote:
At 5:50 pm +0100 on 14/11/03 you wrote:
> Finally a 3G phone capable of global roaming:
>
> http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/16425.html
Not having a Vodafone account but still holding on to my DDI Pocket account, I would very much like to change over if the service is all that great. I've heard the following regarding this "global roaming" service:
1. expensive, poor coverage in Japan
2. No SMS service other than in Japan and then only with Vodafone Japan and U.K subscribers
3. Roaming to the US for example is outrageously expensive (cheaper just to have rented a phone at the airport)
So, has anybody actually used this global roaming service by Vodafone? Since the phones won't be available till Dec, it would be nice to hear how well the phone actually works overseas. (I've heard that not all SIM cards are equal, i.e. every card works with your phone)
Still looking for that universal phone number,
---eric
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Eric Bossieux eric@tti-jpn.com
Tel/Fax/Voicemail: +81-3-6644-0434
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Received on Wed Nov 19 16:12:43 2003