Expert: DebiN - 12/1/2009

Question
I have a Blackberry Tour 9630 with USCellular service.  It has a SIM card option.  I am planning to be in Canada and Norway in the coming months.  I know USCellular does not support International roaming but is it as simple as purchasing a SIM card for one of these Countries from a Web site and inserting it into the phone when I get to that country and the phone will begin to work?  I understand that there would be a new phone number associated with the service.  Also, can I use my Blackberry service too, or will I need to make sure the Blackberry service is "bundled" on the SIM card?

Answer
Your BlackBerry Tour is locked to the US Cellular network. In order to get it to work with a local GSM SIM card outside of the US, you would have to ask US Cellular if they could SIM unlock the phone for you to start and if they were to do this for you, then you could purchase a local SIM and it would work for voice. No matter what you do, your BlackBerry data service will not and cannot work outside of the US on anyone else's network since you are associated with the US Cellular BlackBerry server and you can't have dual servers and there isn't any way to make this work on another carrier as long as you have service with US Cellular. I hope this helps. Thanks. DebiN