Welcome to the first in what may be an ongoing series of “Is X, Inc.’s support an idiot?” posts…

 

GSM is the standard the world ’round. And we all know that any good standard has its defectors. In this case they are the South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. South Korea has a CDMA-only network, which some American phones can roam on. Japan has it’s own network that is no doubt smaller, faster, and cuter. More on that later. The U.S. is split between GSM networks and CDMA networks (okay, and there’s some iDEN, but that’s going the way of analog television and the Sizzler).

In the U.S., AT&T and T-mobile dominate the GSM networks. If you have one of these companies’ service, congratulations; you can most likely roam wherever you damn well please (except of course South Korea and Japan). With your same cell service, you can enjoy French wine, Ethiopian flat bread, and Brazilian Barbecue with the addition of roaming charges muito picante. And just because I can enjoy all of those things within a mile or so of my apartment in Boston, it doesn’t mean I won’t risk the spiciness to have the real deal, and call you on the phone while I’m doing it.

Getting back on track, the other major providers in the U.S. are the reputedly lackluster Sprint, and Verizon. They both run on CDMA (same as South Korea) networks and have some devices that are capable of roaming on GSM as well… just not in this country. Why would you want your Verizon phone to endure the horror of never having a a call dropped while on AT&T? You can’t have the best of both worlds, you can’t have it. 

All of these providers have data cards for PCs, and Verizon has international cards, since they are partnered with Vodafone. My employer has a number of these cards for international travelers, and aside from the 100 MB transfer limit, these cards aren’t too bad. But, for traveling to Japan, they won’t work, because the Japanese are doing their own thing.

Well, according to Verizon’s coverage map, they have some speckles of data service in Japan. I first thought that it was a mistake, and immediately called VZ Support. Tier 1 referred me to the map. Tier 2 came out with a flat-out “Verizon doesn’t even have voice in Japan!” When the map was brought up, however, hold music ensued and the story changed. If the map has the purple specs, your data card must work. I sent three intrepid and hopefully forgiving attorneys to Japan with these cards and low expectations. All totaled, I talked to 4 different people at Verizon, and, while some initially denied service in Japan, they all referred to the apparently infallible map. We’ll soon see if I need to lower my skepticism of crappy maps and Verizon support.