NTT DoCoMo users find their phones just a little too good at roaming
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Apr 13th 2008 2:19PM
posted Apr 13th 2008 2:19PM
Is there really such a thing as too much signal strength? For residents of Tsushima in Japan, the answer is a solid "yes." Folks in the area are a mere 33 miles from the South Korean shore, and NTT DoCoMo customers with international roaming enabled are finding themselves roaming on those powerful airwaves across the Korea Strait -- naturally leading to some rather unpleasant charges. The carrier reports that 38 models are affected by the problem (presumably every handset that's capable of roaming in South Korea), and unfortunately, their only solution is to have affected customers manually configure their phones to use the local network. It'd be awesome if they just juiced the towers to be, like, ten times more powerful, but we suppose that maybe that's not the healthy thing to do.[Via IntoMobile]
The same thing happens all the time here in southern Sweden. At my parents old house, my mom got better reception on danish Sonofon than on her native swedish Vodafone. So when she'd go into the basement, her phone would go roaming in Denmark, and stay roaming when she went upstairs.
Must be a boon for Korean visitors, though.
That occurs in the US some too (Mexico and Canada are foreign countries to the US right?), but US cell companies have put in code and roaming agreements to make it mostly seemless and not result in huge charges. So the Far East gets better equipment but worse service. Ha!
why wont NTT DoCoMo Move to the us, everyone would get their service and phones
because the US brands will bully NTT Do Co Mo to bankruptcy. lol
Also there is some law that prevents them from getting into US markets and US is too big and will cost too much to set up a network compare to japan which is very small land area to cover.
Mexico Roaming is very expensive in the US. $1.50 a minute with Sprint and T-Mobile and $0.99 with AT&T if you don't have a special Mexico plan (which drops it to $0.69). Telcel usually bleeds a lot into the US on border cities.
People in Mexico also get some bleed in from AT&T into Tijuana, and there are parts of the city where you will lose Telcel and the phone will roam in to AT&T and stay there and you also get charged with roaming.
T-Mobile is actually VERY good at limiting their coverage outside the US (or at least in CA). Their signal, from what I've seen, does not bleed in more than 1 mile into Tijuana, and usually just crossing the border drops your call. Same thing with Verizon and Iusacell.
Wait, you mean VZW isn't the most expensive on in that category? Ha! (I know you didn't say that, I'm just tired of the trolls saying VZW is pricier than everyone else in everything)
When I was in Mexico (Puerto Penasco aka Rocky Point) 2 years ago for spring break not only did my VZW phone get excellent coverage there, I was only charged 69 cents a minute for the roaming calls I made.
When at my father's house in Victoria, Canada on Vancouver Island, I can make calls on AT&T across the water from Port Angeles, WA (without Roaming.) Sometimes I get "Call Failed" but for the most part it works. Over in Port Angeles, I noticed my phone saying Roger's from time to time too.
It's over 50 miles across the water to the USA from my father's house, which looks right towards Port Angeles. Lucky for him, the Roger's GSM signal (his carrier) is strong all around Victoria so his phone doesn't roam on AT&T...
And I use the Manual Network Selection on my RAZR V3xx to stay on AT&T signal so I don't inadvertently make a call on Rogers.