Verizon global roaming confirmed by CNET

[whalebus]

I can roam the world with a Galaxy S3. So why not the U.S.?

In the article Verizon told CNET:

The Verizon model of the Galaxy S III will be global ready for GSM roaming after a software update that will be pushed sometime after launch. After the phone gets the software update to be global ready, customers don't need to call customer service to have it unlocked if they wish to use a local SIM while traveling. They can also call Verizon to have an international data plan added if they'd like.

It's the "local SIM" part of the response that surprises me the most. I thought for sure Verizon would lock the phone to their specific GSM roaming partners.

 

[ben7337]

I can roam the world with a Galaxy S3. So why not the U.S.?

In the article Verizon told CNET:



It's the "local SIM" part of the response that surprises me the most. I thought for sure Verizon would lock the phone to their specific GSM roaming partners.

That is surprising. Finally a consumer friendly action by Verizon. Though their international rates are insane for smartphones now as I understand it, and they unlock phones anyway when people request it. This just makes less work for them and makes things easier for consumers. I doubt many people are clamoring to buy a US GSIII in Europe or anywhere else after all.

Now if only we could get they to unlock it for the local US carriers as well. Carriers shouldn't be locking phones off of other carriers at all. The FCC should have made a mandate against that long ago. Hopefully someone out there can get the US models to be as interoperable as is possible based on the radio frequency support in them. The SoC is able to support all of the different communication standards and frequencies after all from what I understand. It's just a matter of if the radios are physically capable of the right frequencies or not.