USA Verizon phone working in India?!
 

Does anyone know much about CDMA in India? My pastor just got back after being there two weeks and he used his Verizon phone to text message. He did not call with it because talk would have been $2 a minute. His was not a fancy phone. Do Verizon phones have 3 or 4 bands normally?

I wouldn't be surprised if it worked fine as some Asian countries do indeed have CDMA deployed in addition to GSM/UMTS. From what I understand, CDMA is deployed on 850 & 1900 MHz primarily, with some places (usually former NMT-using countries) using CDMA on 450 MHz for mobile broadband in rural areas.

Verizon phones work by default in India. I have a friend with a built in EVDO datacard from Verizon who went to India and made the mistake of thinking he was on WiFi when he was roaming on Indian EVDO. He tried to fight the charge on the theory that he never activated international roaming. Verizon cut the bill somewhat, but he still had a US$3,000 roaming bill to pay off.

No. Verizon phones are usually 850/1900 MHz only. They offer the Blackberry 9550 which is CDMA 850/1900 MHz, Quad band GSM and 2100 UMTS/HSPA. It uses a Vodafone SIM card but is labeled Verizon/Vodafone.

Yes. Reliance (India's second largest provider) uses CDMA on the 800mhz band:

Reliance Communications – Reliance Mobile is India’s premier CDMA Mobile Service Provider

Take a look at this Sprint roaming list near the bottom of the India:

Sprint International Carriers

There is US compatible CDMA in India, Indonesia, Israel, China, Japan (sorta), Macau, New Zealand, Peru, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Bangladesh. This is in addition to the Carribean, Latin America, etc. Verizon enables CDMA roaming by default. Even on a World Phone, you have to ask for GSM roaming. This confuses many people.