hi all,

I am in singapore now and would be staying in uk for quite a bit.

are the cell phone technologies/services in both countries different, sucj as CDMA, GSM and so on.

Can i just buy a phone in singapore, bring it over to Uk , get a SIM card and use it.

thanks

and how is the E71, is it a good phone.
^

Get any unlocked GSM phone and it'll work fine in the UK with a pay-as-you-go SIM you can buy here.

Yes you can buy a GSM phone and use it in the UK. I have a E71 and it is a great phone. Just put a sim card in it and talk away. Used my E71 in Dubai, Afghanistan and the UK.

Any phone that works in Singapore will work in the UK. Both countries use GSM 900/1800 and UMTS 2100.

Any GSM or WCDMA phone that will work in Singapore will work in the UK. They also have an incompatible 2g CDMA network.

MobileOne closed its CDMA network in 2001, if that's what you were thinking of.

Wirelessly posted (most likely from a Qantas Pub: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaE71-1/100.07.76; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

Calling all E71 fanbois...yes the E71 you buy in Singapore has all the UK GSM and 3G bands as noted earlier. Mine works just fine there.

Yes, all the mobile phone providers use GSM 900/1800 as well as UMTS 2100. Sometimes you will see it as Dual/Automatic/3G depending on the phone.

As long as the handset is unlocked, you can use any SIM card in it. Most mobile companies in the UK will sell you a cheap handset with a SIM and some credit on Pay As You Go/Talk/Use (PAYG). With using a UK SIM, be aware that there are many different tariffs around which offer different rewards so I advise you to shop arround to find the best one for you. If you are over for several months, you could also look at doing a SIM only contract which is a 30 day rolling contract but you would need to pass a credit check for this.

The E71 is a very good phone and is Nokia's answer to RIMs BlackBerry

I'll have to defer on this one. I knew that there was a CDMA network when I was there in 2000 and I remember a Hong Kong CDMA provider listing roaming in Signapore after that which reinforced my misbelief. I also saw a couple of CDMA sets for sale in Singapore last year, but they were unlocked and could have been met for other places (e.g. China, Indonesia, and India).

If I remember rightly, the CDMA network lasted two or three years before they realised they needed the spectrum for 3G. They closed it down and gave the subscribers GSM phones instead.

Interesting to hear they were selling CDMA phones though - I wonder how that worked? I thought one of the defining points of CDMA was the lack of SIM, meaning networks could much more effectively control the supply and use of handsets... I'm very out of date with my CDMA handset knowledge though. Not even seen one in four years!

The US implementation of CDMA is simless (except for a paired roaming SIM in some CDMA worldphones). The implementation that is used in China and many other countries has a SIM card. Google on "RUIM."

You could also get any two-band Moto that's made in two versions for North America/Europe and switch it to 900/1800.

If you get a dual band phone made for North America, it won't be 900/1800.
(assuming you're talking about GSM)

Motorola makes some entry-level handsets, like the T720 and C168i, that only do two bands (850/1900 or 900/1800) at a time, but can be switched to do the other two.

Sorry I think you're incorrect