Balckberry in Vietnam (help)

April 26, 2007 3:01 AM

Blackberry in Vietnam isnt working? Any advice

Visiting Vietnam and my Blackberry isnt working. Does anyone know if there is a network that supports Blackberry here.

posted by priorpark17 to technology (5 comments total)

Uh, er, did you get a SIM card in Vietnam? Does your Blackberry support GSM?

Did you expect it to work automatically or something?
posted by suedehead at 3:33 AM on April 26, 2007

Are you seeing 'GRPS' in the signal bar at all?

I've worked a lot in far flung places (Africa, The Middle East, Eastern Europe), and sometimes you've got to manually select a network.

Go to Options -> Network, set Network Selection Mode to Manual, then in Network see what providers your BlackBerry can connect to.

Sometimes I've had to try a few before I got GPRS.
posted by Mutant at 3:45 AM on April 26, 2007

According to gsmworld.com, there are 3 networks you could connect to:

Viettel Mobile GSM900
Mobifone GSM900/1800
VINAPHONE GSM900

As far as data goes, Viettel has USSD "Unstructured Supplementary Service Data" and Mobifone has: Circuit Switched 3G services, EDGE Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data.

I don't know if any of those is GPRS

Which Blackberry do you have? At a minimum it better be GSM, probably unlocked so you can get a local provider SIM, and EDGE would be nice.
posted by thilmony at 6:44 AM on April 26, 2007

Actually, contra part of thilmony's comment above, you'd probably be better off NOT getting a local provider SIM. If you did, you almost certainly would not be able to access the Blackberry APN and things beyond it.
posted by rbs at 9:54 AM on April 26, 2007

Who is your home carrier?

If it is T-Mobile, and you plan on being in Vietnam for more than a short time, you should definitely add their International Blackberry Data plan. For only $19.99 a month, you get unlimited email access. Otherwise they charge $15 per megabyte!
posted by dcjd at 10:33 AM on April 26, 2007