www.CostaRicaTicas.com

I have a Nokia N95 Quad Band which I used there and that do not work ;their network uses you phone number when you send a call for some processing. because I tried that and it rejected the call. I got a recording that the network could not process my call. as for the other codes I did not try them. so I cant say they will work. but the * code for the us I tried and they did not work. also the other function that are in the Nokia phones to check status and call forwarding do not work. also the phone will not work on any US network. I thought since it is GSM that it would work on the T-Mobile or AT&T network here in the State. it Does not registered. Sending text back to the state do not work either. The lady said that you should be able to send text to T-Mobie phones in the state. but we tried and it did not work. may be as time goes by they will do upgrade on their system. to bring it in compliance with the world GSM network. But as of right now they are running the very early release of GSM. It does do the work of letting you make and receive calls I purchase a 10K card made several 5 min call back to the state and several in country call and I still have over 7K credit for my next trip. to find out your credit on you phone just dial 147 and chose option 2 and it send you a text with your balance. Hope this info helps.

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"THE TRUTH IS' EVERYBODY IS GOING TO HURT YOU. YOU JUST GOTTA FIND THE ONE WORTH SUFFERING FOR"
Robert Nesta Marley

Does anyone know of the location for outlets other than airport to buy card. Is anthing close to the downtown area? Also, bought an unlocked Motorola L7 and really like the size. Very compact to keep in pocket.

The lady at the Airport told us that we can get cards at any store that sells telephone and services and if you have a credit card you can refill your your credit by dialing 147 and option 1

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"THE TRUTH IS' EVERYBODY IS GOING TO HURT YOU. YOU JUST GOTTA FIND THE ONE WORTH SUFFERING FOR"
Robert Nesta Marley

You know it, brother!!!

Speaking of which, it was great meeting you IRL. Too bad you had to leave so soon. We had some wild times this trip (as usual).

mh

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mh

I bought the L7 a couple weeks ago, under $70 brand new.

Hey y'all...thanks for the good news. I read the post when I was there in July. I have a Motorola from an old plan, and was wondering how to get it unlocked for CR. A friend told me to take it to a cell phone vendor and pay them to do it, but I woud like to get it unlocked before I come again in the middle of September.

Yes, a cell phone place should be able to unlock it for a small fee (<$20). I believe that you can also buy the unlock codes online.

Try this: http://www.unlocktotalk.com/

All,

Either go to your providers website or google your phone model to find out it's capabilities. I was in luck, my old Motorola w490 is a quad band phone (razor is also I believe). Either unlock it yourself before you come (thanks Orange, your spot on YET AGAIN) or have your techno geek friend do it (we all know someone like that, right?). Then just follow the instructions above and you should be in business. Most carriers offer international roaming but it is WAY more expensive than this deal (t-mobile is $1.99 a minute in Costa Rica). Drop in the I.C.E card and WHAM, you should be in business.

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as my father says "better to be lucky than good"

The ICE Prepago plan is still very new and most people know nothing about it. Your best bet would be to go to an ICE office if you cannot go to the booth in baggage claim to buy a SIM. Most of the Tico cellphone shops, even ICE authorized dealers, are not familiar with prepago yet.

Top-ups don't seem to be a problem. Any place where you can pay an ICE bill can recharge for you. It's just difficult to find a place to buy the SIM.

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Women are like beers. I've never had one that I didn't like. Just some that I like more than others! --Western

I recently purchased a Blackberry Tour and had it unlocked. Does anyone else have this phone and were there any problems in CR?

I'm not familiar with the Tour model, must be new. Lots of folks use their BBs in CR and I have not heard of any issues with any of them. I have an 8820 and it works fine in CR.

There is no 3G in CR so your Tour will be linited to the GSM network. Don't expect to have all of the bells and whistles working as you would in the US. Send/receive calls & SMS and maybe internet. That's about all you will get from ICE.

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Women are like beers. I've never had one that I didn't like. Just some that I like more than others! --Western

This is fantastic information and I'm very pleased to hear it. I just got back from Panama City and Barranquilla, Colombia. I have a Nokia E71X under an AT&T plan. I called AT&T before I left and asked if they could unlock my phone. As long as I was a customer with a plan, they had no problem in doing so. So, before I left, my phone was unlocked. Fast forward to Colombia. My girl takes me to a local Comcel office and asks for a SIM card. They take her information, hand me the chip and I hand them 2000 pesos ($1). I now have a phone number in Colombia. The number will not expire but the minutes expire in 30 days. In order to recharge the phone, you can walk in to just about anyplace that has a Comcel sign outside and they will take down your phone number and recharge it with whatever denomination you want. I did 20,000 pesos ($10). I'm sure I have several minutes left over. Unfortunately I won't be back in time to use them. But, I'll just recharge when I get there. One other thing, if you are going to communicate with someone in particular, make sure you use the same network as they use. If they have another network, your calls are more expensive. Comcel and Movistar are the most commonly used networks.

It is SOOOO convenient to have a local phone number while travelling in a different country. My girl has a very demanding job so, she worked quite a bit while I was there. But, with the convenience of a local number we were able to communicate quite a bit. But, Colombia sucks so don't come here.

dapanz1

That's enought for me. As long as I have some type of comm without outrageous international roaming fees, I'm good

Thanks for the info

I got my pre-paid sim yesterday at the airport. The guy could activate it there, so he said for me to do it when I go outside the airport.

I did, I put in the 4-digit PIN and it worked (for an hour). Then about an hour later, it stopped working. I can receive calls, send/receive texts, but I CAN'T make calls. It says "call failed: not subscribed"

I can't even call 147 to re-program it.

Anybody know what I can do? I'm going to ICE on Monday but maybe somebody has an ideas.

I figured out what happened. We were phucking around with the settings on his phone (same model as mine) and we were reproduced the error by accident. So I figured out how I did that.

This happened after I set up my phone settings to "Hide my caller ID" on all calls.

Heads up... Apparently, ICE doesn't allow prepagos to hide the call ID (or display as private). So once I switched back to "Show my caller ID" all is well again. Saved my dumbass a lot of waiting at the ICE office on Monday morning.