Help Orange SF on a US network plan?

[ikeonabike]

Howdy! I'm American. Bought my Orange San Francisco in London while riding my bicycle across Europe. I initially purchased a basic prepaid plan, and basically just got the handset for the GPS. Now that I'm back in the States (in San Francisco, as a matter of fact), I'd like to be able to use my OSF as an actual phone with a US carrier. I'll probably just go with a prepaid or pay-as-you-go plan, but I don't know which service I should use. I've rooted the phone. Do I need to do anything else before I can use it with a non-Orange network? Will the phone be more compatible with one network than another? In the States, my options are Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Many thanks!

Ike

 

[El Presidente]

Hi Ike, welcome to AF!

Looking at the banding of the OSF, it's fairly limited: ZTE Blade - Full phone specifications

I'm heading to work just now but I'll have a look later and see if the networks you mention above support those 2G bands.

 

[ikeonabike]

Hello Presidente,

Did you get a chance to look at the networks banding? Also, um, what's banding? Is it just the frequencies at which the networks transmit their data signals?

Muchas gracias!

~ike

 

[El Presidente]

I did yes, but I totally forgot to come back to you, sorry!

From what I can gather, the phone's 2G radio would work without a problem. Calls would work and you'd get on the net but it would be very slow. However, I don't think you'd pick up a 3G signal over there so any internet based services would be very slow or limited.

And yeah, that's what banding means, there's some info here: Cellular frequencies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia