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Help Pre-paid minutes disappearing when travelling from Mexico to US

Arg. i've got Telcel (Mexico) prepaid minutes and when i travel from Mexico to the US, when i get to my destination (some 30 min. north of the border) i'm getting a message on the phone from Telcel that says that i need to purchase more minutes! By then, the phone has connected or at least "shows" AT&T, with Telcel below it in parenthesis. When i get internet access and can check my Telcel minutes, i'm out of them - they're gone - used up. i also get a popup that says something to the effect that by leaving the "area" i have lost the data connection! and asks if i wish to enable it again or not.

i don't have data plan in Mexico nor the US. i'm just trying to use it for phone calls. i have noticed that under Settings, Mobile Network Settings, Data roaming is not turned on.

This is really a bummer. How can i keep this thing setup so that it only uses phone call minutes? Am i going to have to gain root access to this thing or what?

Well, it happened again after the long weekend went back to the U.S. and my Telcel minutes are gone again. When i went back to Telcel they finally told me that if i go to the U.S. with their minutes, whatever network in the U.S. will connect to the phone and the service will be set up as Roaming which will exhaust the Telcel minutes very rapidly.

As far as i can see, the only way i can keep my Telcel minutes is by removing the SIM befor travelling. Pretty slick, eh, lol?!

Any other ideas, short of removing the SIM?

Any help would sure be greatly appreciated. Have a great evening!
 
Well, i've taken the SIM out two days now and put it back in when i get back to Mexico and haven't lost any Telcel minutes. This is pretty strange since i'm using the same SIM that i took out of my Blackberry Curve 8320. i never had any problems with it when i took it across the border. Neither does my son, who is using his SIM in my old BB, have any problems when he crosses the border with it.

There must be some switch i'm not finding or using to keep this from happening. i mean you'd think the G1 would be even more advanced than a BB in this respect.

Any ideas? Have a great evening! :)
 
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