International use with my own SIM

I have a Trophy and want to replace the Verizon SIM card with my own when I travel overseas. I called Verizon but they said that HTC did not give them any way to unlock the phone from the Verizon SIM so I would not be able to put another one in.

Has anyone tried to do this already? Maybe you don't even need to unlock the SIM, and any old SIM will work out of the gate when overseas?

Accepted answers

TrophyUser

Allright, for anyone else that has this issue:

1. if you go overseas with your phone it is by default set to only connect autmatically to CDMA networks. So it may connect in Mexico or Canada but no in Europe. This is good if you don't want to connect and incur roaming charges by mistake. If you leave your phone in airplane mode out of the country you can use wifi and not worry about connection as well.

2. in GSM countries, once you insert your own SIM and set (settings/ cellular / mode) the phone to GSM, the phone will detect the new sim and ask for an unlock code. I got mine by calling 800 711 8300, option 2, and asking for the code. they connected me to a technician who gave it to me.

3. After the network was detected and I could make a call I still had to re-boot the phone to get email to connect.

All comments

hopmedic

TrophyUser wrote:
I have a Trophy and want to replace the Verizon SIM card with my own when I travel overseas. I called Verizon but they said that HTC did not give them any way to unlock the phone from the Verizon SIM so I would not be able to put another one in.

Has anyone tried to do this already? Maybe you don't even need to unlock the SIM, and any old SIM will work out of the gate when overseas?

Sounds like a canned response to me... The carriers are the ones who are able to unlock the devices. Good luck with your answer, and let us all know when you find it.

C_DM

Unfortunately not every representative might actually know what they are talking about, and when it comes to unlocking the world phones it seems that even less of them know or understand this. You likely want to make sure you talk to someone from Verizon's global support department as they in particular should have the best idea about and ways to deal with things of this nature.

TrophyUser

Yes, I suspect they sometimes do not know the full story. Is there anyone out there that has actually done this?

C_DM

TrophyUser wrote:
Yes, I suspect they sometimes do not know the full story. Is there anyone out there that has actually done this?

Many have definitely done this for many other VZW world phones, so it'd be more than fair to say it would be the same for this one.

TrophyUser

Allright, for anyone else that has this issue:

3. After the network was detected and I could make a call I still had to re-boot the phone to get email to connect.