SIM Card Gone Bad?

I've pontificated before on the poor coverage with my T-Mobile phone, and plenty of other issues. Unfortunately, I'm locked into their two year contract, but at least the light at the end of the tunnel is dimly present as I'm up for renewal in November this year. I actually emailed them to find out what the early termination fee would be, and it's $200 per phone. As I have two, and the cost of canceling is nearly the cost of keeping it, I'm stuck for the time being.

While I had an email exchange going, I also explained that on the major routes out of my town, there is no coverage for miles. I also explained that the phone should roam onto the AT&T network. After they questioned the coverage by their competitor, I went so far as to email them the screenshot of AT&T's service area, and now they were stuck. Or were they?

Now they started with the series of "busywork" activities. Please follow this ten step sequence of resetting your phone. Of course no difference, but it took me a day to do it, and recheck the service. How about checking the software version? Cycle the phone on and off, etc, etc. Needless to say, I'm sure you've realized that none of this was going to help any more than hopping on one foot and swinging a chicken over my head! It was also frustrating that each time the email went to a new rep who didn't know what went on before and I had to recover old ground.

After they ran out of activities, the final one was to tell me that maybe the SIM card had gone bad. That's the little card that fits into the back of the phone underneath the battery that identifies the phone on the network. If you want to know more, there's an excellent article about it here. True, it is a memory chip, and I've had those go down before so it just might be the problem. Why not give it a try?

I headed to the T-Mobile company store with both my phones. I waited on line while folks were paying their cell phone bills- in cash (as an aside, I would never even think of coming into the store just to pay a bill, but that's just me). I explained the problem, and the customer rep told me to get HotSpot at Home. Yeah, like that was going to help. I related that the phone had service at home (generally), but it was on the road outside my town where the issue was. He then told me that with HotSpot at Home, it would roam onto open WiFi networks. Huh? Is that the answer here? To not fix the T-Mobile service and hope customers happen to roam onto open WiFi networks of unsuspecting neighbors that didn't secure their wireless???!

At any rate, when he was reminded that my contract was up in the Fall, and that I would go elsewhere for better coverage, he agreed to change the SIM Cards in both phones. I'm still wondering if both could realistically go bad simultaneously. Then again, I never had coverage in this area, and the phone doesn't roam.

On the ride home, the phones still didn't roam onto AT&T's network that I know is there. My phone, if forced, can even detect the alternate network, but not connect to it.

However, I also noticed that the coverage with the new SIM Card is slightly improved. It was also a clear sunny day yesterday, so that might be the factor responsible. In my mind the jury is still out, and I'll keep you posted over the next few days.

In the meantime, I'm counting down eight months left till I can ditch this contract and move on. I'll be switching to "More bars in more places," or "Can you hear me now?"

Jonas