Here's a quick report of my experience with traveling with the HTC Incredible 4G outside of the USA to New Zealand and Australia.
I opted to keep the phone in airplane mode while in New Zealand. Free Wi-Fi is plentiful there and worked for occasional use.
When I reached Melbourne Australia, I stopped in a Telstra store and purchased a pre-paid SIM. There were about four different price levels. The mid-level cost $50 Australian. I opted for the $70 plan which included 1.5gb of data and about $1,400 credit for phone calls including international calls.
Swapping the SIM chip went smoothly. Initially there was no connection but going into Settings > Mobile Network > Network Mode and switching it from LTE to Global did the trick. At that point text messages arrived from Telstra and I had cellular signal bars. As instructed by Telstra I placed a call and entered an ID number to add the appropriate minutes for my package to the SIM. Data and MMS did not work while I was in Melbourne. When I arrived in Sydney I made several international calls to family and friends and the connection was clear. It was not necessary to dial + first or any country codes -- it just worked. Free Wi-fi was not as common in Sydney and I was motivated to get data working. The SIM card included a small user guide which included a web site to visit to solve data problems. Using this link prompted me to choose manufacturer and model of my phone. While the Inc4G wasn't an option, the IncS was. Essentially I had to go into Settings > Mobile Network > CDMA Options > Access Point Names > Menu > New APN to enter a bunch of settings for Telstra including username, password, server address, and port. Data started working and I would sometimes get 3G service as well as other levels like "H" which I had never seen before. Performance was not bad. Frequently the connection speed was "E" (Edge I presume) and even that had decent performance.
At this time I had both APN settings for Telstra and Verizon in my phone. Telstra was the one selected. It was great to have mobile data including navigation and Google review info while in a new city. Friends and family were surprised to receive voice calls.
Returning home there was a challenge. I swapped my Verizon SIM chip back into the phone only to find the only APN setting was Telstra. I'm not sure why, but the Verizon APN setting vanished. The result was no data on the phone when back in the USA. Ugh. Not wanting to call Verizon Wireless, I searched the Internet for solutions. Others reported no success with Verizon in similar situations and ended up having to perform the dreaded factory data reset. Nooooo! I called 611 and received a pretty good support person. His suggestion was to keep pulling and inserting the Verizon SIM and one time it would pull the Verizon settings. Apparently they are not hand-entered like they are with Australia's Telstra. No luck. Then my call with the Verizon rep dropped or he hung up. I found a friend with a Verizon HTC phone and discovered the name of the Verizon APN was VZWInternet. I created a new APN with this name, pulled the SIM and reinserted and instantly received a 4G connection. Hooray! I hope this info will help someone one day.
Geo
I opted to keep the phone in airplane mode while in New Zealand. Free Wi-Fi is plentiful there and worked for occasional use.
When I reached Melbourne Australia, I stopped in a Telstra store and purchased a pre-paid SIM. There were about four different price levels. The mid-level cost $50 Australian. I opted for the $70 plan which included 1.5gb of data and about $1,400 credit for phone calls including international calls.
Swapping the SIM chip went smoothly. Initially there was no connection but going into Settings > Mobile Network > Network Mode and switching it from LTE to Global did the trick. At that point text messages arrived from Telstra and I had cellular signal bars. As instructed by Telstra I placed a call and entered an ID number to add the appropriate minutes for my package to the SIM. Data and MMS did not work while I was in Melbourne. When I arrived in Sydney I made several international calls to family and friends and the connection was clear. It was not necessary to dial + first or any country codes -- it just worked. Free Wi-fi was not as common in Sydney and I was motivated to get data working. The SIM card included a small user guide which included a web site to visit to solve data problems. Using this link prompted me to choose manufacturer and model of my phone. While the Inc4G wasn't an option, the IncS was. Essentially I had to go into Settings > Mobile Network > CDMA Options > Access Point Names > Menu > New APN to enter a bunch of settings for Telstra including username, password, server address, and port. Data started working and I would sometimes get 3G service as well as other levels like "H" which I had never seen before. Performance was not bad. Frequently the connection speed was "E" (Edge I presume) and even that had decent performance.
At this time I had both APN settings for Telstra and Verizon in my phone. Telstra was the one selected. It was great to have mobile data including navigation and Google review info while in a new city. Friends and family were surprised to receive voice calls.
Returning home there was a challenge. I swapped my Verizon SIM chip back into the phone only to find the only APN setting was Telstra. I'm not sure why, but the Verizon APN setting vanished. The result was no data on the phone when back in the USA. Ugh. Not wanting to call Verizon Wireless, I searched the Internet for solutions. Others reported no success with Verizon in similar situations and ended up having to perform the dreaded factory data reset. Nooooo! I called 611 and received a pretty good support person. His suggestion was to keep pulling and inserting the Verizon SIM and one time it would pull the Verizon settings. Apparently they are not hand-entered like they are with Australia's Telstra. No luck. Then my call with the Verizon rep dropped or he hung up. I found a friend with a Verizon HTC phone and discovered the name of the Verizon APN was VZWInternet. I created a new APN with this name, pulled the SIM and reinserted and instantly received a 4G connection. Hooray! I hope this info will help someone one day.
Geo
