Yeah I was thinking about getting a couple of the refurb gophones cheap and keeping the phones themselves as backups, and using the sims in our own phones. I'll get them unlocked the week before we move over.

That's interesting what you say about T-Mobile US/UK being seperate companies. But I did get coverage from T-Mobile US when I landed at the airport - just not anywhere within 20 miles of where I was staying (out in the country). As this is the same place we are moving to I reckon that T-Mobile just doesn't have coverage there.

I meant if I am sending texts from the US to the UK or receiving texts from the UK to my phone in the US.

depending on your location, tri-band phones on att may be bricks

att discontinued using the 900 mhz band and rendered all my triband phones obsolete

you need a phone with 850 mhz

tmobile still uses 900 i think but their serivce is a bit crap in many locations

i could have got the bands mixed up but the general message is the same - if you want to use a world phone, it needs to be quad band

to ldobson, the us phone situation is not quite as hideous as it used to be

in fact hspda 3g coverage seems to be a lot better in the us than when I was in the uk a couple of weeks ago

I bought my phone in spetember last year in the usa and there is nothing more advanced at this point in the UK at any price

Also, my wife has a samsung blackjack II and theres really not anything better available in the UK in that price segment

Yeah, you would think that TMobile UK/US would allow their customers to be treated "local" when on either network, however that is not the case, you may still get coverage, but it will be billed as "roaming" rather than included in your plan. So there really is no advantage to having TMobile in either country as in essance they a separate providers, but the same company. TMobile suggest getting a local UK SIM which you can buy on any market stall in the UK.

I would agree, it certainly is getting better, however every where i`m been on the East coast thus far, coverage is only available in major city areas, and then you get dropped down to Edge (at least with AT&T which is the largest GSM provider). I`m sure there are areas with better coverage then ever, however 3G is old news in Europe, so who knows when all the providers will finally get blanket coverage in the US. They just finished rolling out GSM.

The US needs to get better GSM coverage. I used to have ATT (Cingular back then) and the coverage was awful. The one thing I did like though was my phone would work all over Europe, no problem.