In my previous post on Cellular One I mentioned that they have handed off the local towers to AT&T. Fellow blogger Dan Brantley mentioned his experience with such a transition. Well, I can report that some of that is coming true here. In addition to running down the battery on my Blackberry, my wife’s phone (which has already transitioned to AT&T) lost its SIM card today. I pulled it out and put it back in and all is well for the moment, but that kind of stuff just never happened before.

I understand that management finally got wind about the roaming. I passed the information up earlier, but I write so many emails I’m sure it got lost. I understand that we have worked out the new contract, but have no idea what kind of terms they worked out. My guess is that it was a two year contract, but at the rate we add phones that’s probably not a problem.

I did some more looking at phones and the one I’m interested in is not out yet. I want something that looks like the Blackberry Curve, with a full keyboard, but in a flip model. At least I haven’t seen it yet. Going by what Blackberry says is available for AT&T I’ll probably go with the 8820 if I’m given a choice. If I get one of those without a full keyboard I’ll have to yank the SIM and put it in my old phone because I can’t stand that predictive typing stuff.

I noticed over on Mobile Tech News that they say the 8220 has a full QWERTY keyboard. If it does, then I’m interested, but I can’t tell from the pictures that Blackberry has whether or not this is true. I did a google image search and everything is small, but it seems to me that there is no full QWERTY keyboard there. Someone correct me or confirm this?

I live in a region that AT&T recently took over from Cellular One. All my household phones were switched over rather easily months ago. We don’t talk much except to eachother, so the prepaid phones have been the cheapest route to go there. My work phone is a Blackberry 8300 and so far has not been converted to AT&T’s network. I noticed late last week that the roaming triangle started appearing on my phone even while at home and work which have always been prime locations for signal. The phone must have started searching for a non-roaming tower because I can’t run more than a day without a battery charge now. It is quite frustrating. I never had this problem in non-ATT areas before. I asked around a bit at work and everyone’s phone is doing the same thing now.

I understand that we’re supposed to be either getting new phones or new SIM cards for our existing phones. I’m wondering what the holdup is.

I’m really hoping for a new phone. It’s not that I don’t like my 8300, but so many advancements have happened since then. The GPS function is one of the most interesting, however I’ve also noticed that the newer models have a more responsive interface than mine. Of course there’s the storm/thunder too, but I’m not sure how I would like a keyboard that didn’t have a raised surface.