Expert: DebiN - 3/9/2010

Question
My apologies... I know almost nothing about cell phones, so if you answer, please make it really simple for me to understand.

Right now we use our cell phone, AT&T's Pay-as-you-go service, for emergencies only. We will be traveling in Europe by car and think we will purchase a Mobal international pay-as-you go service to use for emergencies while in Europe. Mobal offers three grades of phone... Motorola C118 ($49), Motorola L6i ($99) and a $179 Nokia.

I was thinking, when we get back to the US why not toss our old AT&T phone and use the Mobal phone with a US prepaid pay-as-you-go SIM card. I asked Mobal about this and they told me their phone is locked and they cannot unlock it, so I would not be able use it with another service back in the US.

This doesn't seem right to me. Shouldn't I be able to unlock a phone and slip in a different provider's SIM card and make calls?

If I can't use Mobal's phone back here in the US I will just buy the $49 C118 and toss it when we get back home. But if I can use the phone back here in the US then I would buy the $99 L6i and toss my AT&T product.

Any advice on this?

Answer
What Mobal is telling you is completely correct. They SIM lock their phones, just like AT&T and the other carriers do in the US. If they won't SIM unlock the phone, you can't use it on another carrier. And, it is likely that the phones may not work in the US because some of these may only be dual band European phones (which means that they only work abroad).

Many carriers throughout the world subsidize the cost of phones and therefore they SIM lock phones and they truly can only be used on their networks. People pay third parties to SIM unlock phones, but not all phones will work properly on everyone's networks and you have to set up the MMS and WAP on them (that refers to multi-media messaging and internet service).

I would strongly suggest buying the cheap $49.99 phone and using it while abroad and then just keeping the phone you have with AT&T. It's probably your least expensive option. It costs around $30.00 to SIM unlock a phone anyway.

I hope this helps. Thanks. DebiN