US Version of Samsung Note: Internet in Europe

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by lizzie1955

Inquisitor, I just stumbled on this old post. It is almost a year later and I have happily been using my unlocked Samsung Galaxy Note SGH-1717. That said, I am about to head to London for two weeks and was planning to use Lebara, again, or the O2 International Sim. Am I going to have problems because this phone doesn't support 900 or will 2100 suffice? Thanks, Lizzie

As long as you stay in urban regions you should see pretty good 3G coverage on the 2100 MHz band, which was the only frequency used for 3G for years (so-called "UMTS2100") and therefore has been spread widely. Of course with a UMTS900-capable phone you would still experience a fast 3G connection in some places where the UMTS2100 signal has already faded (especially indoors). But besides UMTS900 and UMTS2100 your phone will be able to use the old GSM900 and GSM1800 networks (both slow 2G technologies) from Vodafone (that's the network used by Lebara) and EE (the new company emerged from the merger of T-Mobile UK and Orange UK), so you will hardly lose coverage. Nevertheless 2G coverage is slowly deteriorating as Vodafone and EE have been switching off GSM900 in order to use the released frequencies for UMTS900 and EE have also been switching off GSM1800 in order to deploy LTE1800.

[lizzie1955]

Thanks Inquisitor. How are you? It's been ages. I'm going to be in London 100% of the time so I suspect I'll be okay. My only other option will be to use Three.com.uk. They have a good unlimited data plan but I know nothing about their service.

[UKSTEVE]

Three are pretty good for mobile data Lizzie - they only have a 3G (2100) network, however, although it has the best coverage of the 3G network.

You can get a 1month/1GB SIM for about £8.00 on eBay or a 3month/2GB SIM for about £14.00 on eBay or Amazon.

Hope this info helps / Steve