Can anyone tell me how much the phone will cost if i buy one there? I plan to do pay as you go. Which companies are the better ones to use?
thanks
EH
3000NT for a pretty good little phone.
Brian
More than double that for a really good one… My Motorola triband cost around 8k, including Motorola accessories (if you agree to take the knock-offs, it’s a little cheaper - don’t do it though, because knock-off batteries generally aren’t as good) two chargers, two batteries, a case, a hands-free set, etc.
Why not just bring your phone with you ?
I can’t bring mine from home because the only one i own is from New Zealand and will not work in Canada or Asia.
EH
You sure about that? I used to have a pay-as-you-go job from the warehouse that couldn’t be taken anywhere, but the ‘proper’ phone I had on my previous trip worked just about anywhere. I bought it in Germany, used it in Spain, Australia, NZ and China. No probs.
You need a GSM (or GPRS) phone with a removable SIM card. All you do is get a new card for it when you arrive and you’re in business.
Everywhere in the world except in North America, cell phones use a digital system called GSM (“Global System for Mobile Communications”), and the frequency bands used are 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. (All GSM phones produced since about 1999 are “dual frequency”.)
However, in North America, most carriers use two completely different digital systems, CDMA and TDMA, which are both incompatible with GSM. Sprint and Verizon use CDMA (“Code Division Multiple Access”) and AT&T and Cingular use TDMA (“Time Division Multiple Access”). In addition, the frequency bands used in North America are 800 Mhz and 1900 MHz, which is incompatible with the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands used in the rest of the world.
Recently, a few carriers in North America have started to use GSM, but they use the 1900 MHz band, whereas the rest of the world uses GSM on the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands.
In addition, analog cell phones everywhere in the world use AMPS (“Advanced Mobile Phone Service”). However, AMPS is being phased out and there is no longer any AMPS service in Taiwan. (They used to have telephone numbers beginning with “090”.)
Therefore, a digital cell phone bought in New Zealand would work in Taiwan with no problem at all. But it would not work in North America.
[quote=“EH”]I can’t bring mine from home because the only one I own is from New Zealand and will not work in Canada or Asia.
EH[/quote]
The standard in Asia, as in Europe, is GSM900. However in most countries many operators are using the slightly newer standard of GSM1800. My phone (Nokia 8210) which I bought some years ago in England is dual band (900 and 1800) and has been used in England, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangkok, China, and Taiwan.
As far as I am aware, and as a previous poster has pointed out, you only need to worry if you bought your phone in the States or Canada.
Triband phones (including my locally-bought Motorola) have 900, 1800 and 1900 frequency bands, which means that they can be used anywhere in North America that uses the 1900 band.
Yes, but they can only access carriers that use the GSM system. They can’t access any carriers that use CDMA or TDMA. In North America, only T-mobile, Pacbell (Cingular on the west coast) and Bellsouth Mobility (Cingular in the Southeast) use GSM (on the 1900 MHz band).
My Taiwan phone worked in NZ, so an NZ phone should work here.
Brian
My Aussie phone worked no probs here, until I left it in the back of a taxi.
[quote]
However, in North America, most carriers use two completely different digital systems, CDMA and TDMA, which are both incompatible with GSM. Sprint and Verizon use CDMA (“Code Division Multiple Access”) and AT&T and Cingular use TDMA (“Time Division Multiple Access”). In addition, the frequency bands used in North America are 800 Mhz and 1900 MHz, which is incompatible with the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands used in the rest of the world. [/quote]
A slight technical quibble, courtesy of the folks at
how stuff works
GSM1800 is not a new standard, just an additional frequency band. GSM900, 1800 and 1900 use exactly the same technology based on the GSM standard with just the RF (radio frequency) components like transmitter and receivers being different.
In fact some manufacturer’s infrastructure (switches, base station controllers and base stations) are identical and can handle all 3 frequency bands within one network. Hint: it’s not an American company. 
GSM uses TDMA. GSM is the actual standard and comes in 3 flavours: GSM900, GSM1800 and GSM1900, formerly called GSM, DCS and PCS respectively.
TDMA and (W-)CDMA are the access technology, i.e. how the mobile communicates with the base station (via the air), they are not standards by itself.
Of course, as quoted by tmwc, there can be different ways of implementing TDMA as part of a cellular standard, thus it would be more correct to compare GSM to IS-136.
In a CDMA network users share one frequency and are identified by a unique code while in TDMA users are allocated one time slot of a frequency/carrier (one GSM carrier provides up to 8 timeslots).
There are pros and cons to both technologies but the main point is that they are incompatible. Besides the US also Japan likes to create their own standards and what is called “a popular system” above normally means proprietery and expensive.
Wow thank you everyone for the help now my next question is can i get an adapter for the wall charger that will change it from new zealand to taiwan plug styles, or can i just buy a new one there (charger) because im not sure they will have the same make of phone there but the size of the plug on the phone should be fairly generic right?
EH
New chargers are very cheap. Like NT$300.
Chargers and connectors are not generic, so beware.
If you bring your phone you should also bring your charger - as long as it can handle 110V/60Hz. For the different plug you can use an adapter.
Else buy a new charger, I just paid NT$390 for a travel charger (110-230V).
so thats the price of the phone… how about service charges though? is it just all pay as you can go, or can i get a monthly plan? or is that difficult when i first arrive…
while we’re on the topic of mobile phones, what options do people have if they’re staying in Taiwan short-term? i know there is pay-as-you-go, but are there short contracts? are there non-contract monthly plans? i assume it’s much much cheaper to buy a phone with a contract, and the last time i was in Taipei, the pay-as-you-go rates were horrible! 10 NT a minute, if i remember correctly! sigh… anyways, i may be in Taiwan for as little as four months. any ideas?
As far as I know, I think foreigners can only get the prepaid pay as you go plans. If you want anything besides that, the policies are different for each carrier, but you generally need a Taiwanese friend to sign up for you in their name, or you need an ARC and Taiwanese guarantor (which has been discussed at length in another thread). Assuming you decide to get a normal monthly plan, the minimum service contract term I think is one year if you want to get the discount on the phone.
I’m not sure if carriers in all Western countries use them or not, but if you plan to use your existing GSM phone on a carrier other than your home carrier, make sure your phone doesn’t have “subsidy lock”. This is a phone lock code that your local carrier uses to make sure your phone will only work with their SIMs. In my home country, the GSM carriers do that to make sure that you don’t jump to a competing carrier w/o fulfilling the service contract terms. If it does have a subsidy lock, then you can ask your carrier to unlock it for you, but the terms under which they will do so vary from carrier to carrier.