Okay so I bought a Sagem MW3020 when I was in the UK on vacation in January… I recently stumbled across it and was wondering if I could use it as my mobile phone over here in the United States. I currently have a mobile phone with TMobile and have a sim card I can swap between the two. I would simply swap the two cards and check it but my Sagem has no charge left in it and I’d like to know if it has a chance of working before I buy a converter so I can charge it. Will this work?
Looking at the specifications, the phone is only Dual Band which will work only in Europe. Phones from the UK must be Tri-Band to work in the US due to the different network used over there, so no, unfortunately the phone will not work in the US.
Mobile phones in the US use 800 MHz (“cellular”) and 1900 MHz (“PCS”). In Europe, they use 900 and 1800 instead.
A European tri-band phone that can work with 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz should work in the US, but only in areas where GSM service is available on the 1900 MHz band.
Even within the US, phones from one provider frequently will not work if you change to a different provider, due to differences in encoding/decoding schemes, etc.
Dudes, if you’re buying a phone in the UK to use here, you’ve got to go retro!
(and they’re guaranteed to work in the USA…now as for mobility…)