Phone shows "Voicestream Roaming"

I was getting my old unlocked Motorola 900/1800/1900 tri-band phone
ready for a trip to Taiwan, and I switched it over to 1900 to see what
it would do with my MaxRoam SIM card. I was surprised to see it display
"Voicestream Roaming." Why wouldn't it be displaying "T-Mobile Roaming?"
Voicestream never has had a network out in the west, they were already
T-Mobile when they got Cingular's 1900 MHz network.

On 2008-03-10, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> I was getting my old unlocked Motorola 900/1800/1900 tri-band phone
> ready for a trip to Taiwan, and I switched it over to 1900 to see what
> it would do with my MaxRoam SIM card. I was surprised to see it display
> "Voicestream Roaming." Why wouldn't it be displaying "T-Mobile Roaming?"
> Voicestream never has had a network out in the west, they were already
> T-Mobile when they got Cingular's 1900 MHz network.

T-Mobile switched from Cingular California's old MCC-MNC (310-170)
to the code they seem to have settled on nationwide (310-260) over
a year ago. I assume 310-260 was originally used by Voicestream in
some other part of the country.

Dennis Ferguson

At 10 Mar 2008 06:16:52 +0000 Dennis Ferguson wrote:

> T-Mobile switched from Cingular California's old MCC-MNC (310-170)
> to the code they seem to have settled on nationwide (310-260) over
> a year ago. I assume 310-260 was originally used by Voicestream in
> some other part of the country.

Yep, 310-260 was one of the many Voicestream MOCs. My first phone with them,
an old Nokia 8290, still says "Voicestream" if I stick a T-Mo SIM in it.

On Mar 9, 11:49 pm, Todd Allcock <eleccon...@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote:
> At 10 Mar 2008 06:16:52 +0000 Dennis Ferguson wrote:
>
> > T-Mobile switched from Cingular California's old MCC-MNC (310-170)
> > to the code they seem to have settled on nationwide (310-260) over
> > a year ago. I assume 310-260 was originally used by Voicestream in
> > some other part of the country.
>
> Yep, 310-260 was one of the many Voicestream MOCs. My first phone with them,
> an old Nokia 8290, still says "Voicestream" if I stick a T-Mo SIM in it.

310-26(0) is *the* MCC/MNC for T-Mobile USA. T-Mobile formerly had 13
or so different MNC's mostly because of companies that they took over
or different parts of the network that developed. 16 was Omnipoint, 20
was Idaho, Oregon and Washington state; 21 Iowa, 22 Kansas & Oklahoma;
23 Utah; 24 El Paso, NM and AZ; 25 Hawa'ii; 27 Powertel; 31 Aerial in
Texas and FL; There are probably some I've left out. 310-26(0) is now
the MCC/MNC for T-Mobile USA.

If you're a roamer on a system the operator identifier may not be the
present day operator name and you may get what's in the firmware
table of the handset so a roamer might see VoiceStream, VStream, USA
260 or 310-260 as the identifier for the operator. It was the case in
California and Nevada that it didn't show T-Mobile or VoiceStream
since the towers were broadcasting 310-17(0). T-Mobile branded
handsets pretty much always showed T-Mobile even within "310-17" while
unlocked non-T-Mobile handsets might have shown Cingular as the only
network(s) available.