Last week my company sent me on a business trip to Bangalore, India. My flight had a lay over in Frankfurt, Germany. I was looking forward to my first opportunity to try out international service with my new Icon. I called Verizon the week before I left for my trip and had them add international data and voice to my service plan so that everything would work properly and I wouldn't be charged outrageous fees (even though the fees are still high).
After landing in Frankfurt, I turned on my Icon and after a few minutes of searching service said "Vodaphone H". I tested out making a phone call and that worked fine. However I could not get any data services at all. This was very frustrating but I didn't want to bother with calling Verizon as I would only be in Frankfurt for a few hours. After landing in Bangalore, India I turned on my Icon and after a few minutes of searching I got a "ROAMING 1X" indicator. Meaning I had an unknown carrier and super slow data services. I tested out making a phone call and that worked fine. However, same as Frankfurt, I was unable to get any data services. Later on in the week I was using my phone for a voice call that was longer than just a quick "hello" and found that I was getting consistently dropped calls and the signal was swinging from 4 bars to 1 bar even though I was standing in exact same spot the whole time. Oh well I just chalked this up to a crappy local cell tower. For the entire week I could never get any data and I had to rely on Wifi connections to get data. What was really frustrating was that my co-workers who came on the trip with iPhone's on Verizon were getting data services (at 1x speed). They were laughing that my brand new Windows phone on the same carrier could not get any data services. One last weird thing happened on the last day of my trip.... I was on my way to the airport driving through town and my Icon was in my pocket when I heard the email notification sound. I thought "that was weird", I looked at the Icon and it had retrieved an email. The indicator still said "ROAMING 1X". I opened IE and tried to launch a web page and what do you know, it worked! I continued testing the data connection all the way to the terminal in the airport and the data services worked right up until I turned off the phone after boarding the plane. I connected through Frankfurt on the return trip and again tested the data connection. I had the same "Vodaphone H" connection in the airport and again had no data services. My co-worker sitting right next to me in the airport with his iPhone on Verizon had data services working just fine.
So in summary, my International experience with my Icon last week was an exercise in frustration and disappointment. Especially vexing was that my co-workers with Verizon were working just fine throughout the entire trip (even though the 1x data speeds were super slow at least they could get email).
Forgot to mention, under settings, I did enable Data Roaming, changed SIM mode to "Global Mode" and I also tried "LTE, GSM, or UTMS". None of those settings would get data to work for me.
After landing in Frankfurt, I turned on my Icon and after a few minutes of searching service said "Vodaphone H". I tested out making a phone call and that worked fine. However I could not get any data services at all. This was very frustrating but I didn't want to bother with calling Verizon as I would only be in Frankfurt for a few hours. After landing in Bangalore, India I turned on my Icon and after a few minutes of searching I got a "ROAMING 1X" indicator. Meaning I had an unknown carrier and super slow data services. I tested out making a phone call and that worked fine. However, same as Frankfurt, I was unable to get any data services. Later on in the week I was using my phone for a voice call that was longer than just a quick "hello" and found that I was getting consistently dropped calls and the signal was swinging from 4 bars to 1 bar even though I was standing in exact same spot the whole time. Oh well I just chalked this up to a crappy local cell tower. For the entire week I could never get any data and I had to rely on Wifi connections to get data. What was really frustrating was that my co-workers who came on the trip with iPhone's on Verizon were getting data services (at 1x speed). They were laughing that my brand new Windows phone on the same carrier could not get any data services. One last weird thing happened on the last day of my trip.... I was on my way to the airport driving through town and my Icon was in my pocket when I heard the email notification sound. I thought "that was weird", I looked at the Icon and it had retrieved an email. The indicator still said "ROAMING 1X". I opened IE and tried to launch a web page and what do you know, it worked! I continued testing the data connection all the way to the terminal in the airport and the data services worked right up until I turned off the phone after boarding the plane. I connected through Frankfurt on the return trip and again tested the data connection. I had the same "Vodaphone H" connection in the airport and again had no data services. My co-worker sitting right next to me in the airport with his iPhone on Verizon had data services working just fine.
So in summary, my International experience with my Icon last week was an exercise in frustration and disappointment. Especially vexing was that my co-workers with Verizon were working just fine throughout the entire trip (even though the 1x data speeds were super slow at least they could get email).
Forgot to mention, under settings, I did enable Data Roaming, changed SIM mode to "Global Mode" and I also tried "LTE, GSM, or UTMS". None of those settings would get data to work for me.
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