International Calling Questions/Contacts on SIM?

[DLCPhoto]

I will be taking my Verizon TP2 to Costa Rica next month, and Greece a few months later. First time with an International capable phone. I just purchased and installed a Celtrek (Global Roaming www.celtrek.com) SIM. I temporarily switched to GSM, entered the PIN, called it using the U.S. number they assigned to me, and it seems to be working just fine.

In order to make calls to the U.S. when I'm out of town, I basically need to add "001" to the regular 10-digit phone numbers in my contact list. What I'm wondering is there some way I can have it automatically add the "001" when placing calls, so that all I have to do is hit the Contact I want to call and initiate a call the same as I do here.

I've looked through the phone Settings, and haven't found any place to enter this information yet. I see some options in the "Enable Assisted Dialing" where United States (310) is selected, but don't see exactly how I'd configure this to add the "001" to all my calls.

Also, I see there is a built-in capability to add my Contact List to the SIM card. Is there any practical reason to do this? I use SPB Backup, with nightly scheduled backups, so don't need another back using the SIM card. But are there other advantages to having them, or calling them from, the SIM?

Thanks.

[isdnmatt]

You don't need to dial 001 in front of your numbers. +1 will accomplish the same thing. So if you set assisted dialing to Costa Rica or any other code besides US, it will start adding +1 to your numbers.

[alex jb]

I just copied one of my non-US contacts over to the sim then openied in sim manager, added the country code.
Now if I hit call sim manager it will call using the code, sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but it does work.

[DLCPhoto]

Originally Posted by isdnmatt

You don't need to dial 001 in front of your numbers. +1 will accomplish the same thing. So if you set assisted dialing to Costa Rica or any other code besides US, it will start adding +1 to your numbers.

Thanks for the reply.

If I change to Costa Rica, e.g., it shows the "IDD Prefix" as set to 00. According to Celtek's instructions:

Dial 00 + country code, area code, and phone number.
Example: Global Roaming Inc office 00+1+305+2493121 (without the + signs) 0013052493121 then press Send ,2-5 seconds later your phone will ring, accept the callback and the system will connect you to dialed party.

So that's where I got the "001" needing to be added. Now maybe the phone is smart enough, and knows to add this, but I want to make sure I've got this configured right before I head out of the country. How does it know to add the "1" country code for my U.S. contact numbers?

[alex jb]

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

Thanks for the reply.

If I change to Costa Rica, e.g., it shows the "IDD Prefix" as set to 00. According to Celtek's instructions:



So that's where I got the "001" needing to be added. Now maybe the phone is smart enough, and knows to add this, but I want to make sure I've got this configured right before I head out of the country. How does it know to add the "1" country code for my U.S. contact numbers?

I can tell you that it isn't that smart the other way round...
I updated my contact numbers from facebook for some of my UK friends and they don't write them with the 44 country code (for the UK). Phone contacts doesn't add it automatically or at the time of the call, if I don't edit the contact manually, the call does not go through.

[DLCPhoto]

Originally Posted by alex jb

I just copied one of my non-US contacts over to the sim then openied in sim manager, added the country code.
Now if I hit call sim manager it will call using the code, sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but it does work.

Thanks. Sounds like this will be another option, although I'd like to understand how to enable the correct international calling using my primary contact list.

[DLCPhoto]

Well, I tried it out to see what would happen: changed my TP2 from CDMA Only to GSM, and just tried making a call to Celtrek using their regular 10-digit U.S. phone number. I didn't change Assisted Dialing or anything else. I received the call-back within a few seconds, as I'm supposed to, and I was connected to them without any difficulty at all!! I checked my "Call History" and it seems the "+1" was automatically entered to the 10-digit number!!

So assuming it works like this when I'm out of the country, I should be able to just make calls with my regular contact list, same as usual. As I've said elsewhere, I have no affiliation with Celtrek, but have been quite impressed both with their Customer Service and the fact that everything has worked as promised, without difficulty or unwelcome surprises.