What happens when the bars run out?

@jamessmith01
Yes. I have used opera mini (and Mobile 10) whilst "piggy backing" onto Orange. Tested it just before I posted. The only thing other than the speed that changes when I am on GPRS is Three's own portal shows very limited selection of options. All other applications and services work.

@animal63
Thanks for the info. In that case perhaps there's a setting I need to change... are you using the defaults for Opera and for the three internet connection?

Doing nothing special with settings. I just use the defaults that the Nokia wizard set up when I plugged in the 3 SIm and installed opera and went.

Jimmy1 wrote:From an American perspective, this is somewhat solved by CDMA wireless technology. Sure, GSM is the global standard, and I'm even currently GSM (AT&T), but back when I was with Verizon Wireless (CDMA carrier), I could get a signal pretty much anywhere in the U.S.

And I mean anywhere.

I remember a camping trip with my buddies around 2006-2007; we were out in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. Those with GSM cell phones at the time could barely receive a bar of signal. My Verizon phone had no problem; I had a full signal lock while trekking through woods.

And most of the latest Android phones here, are on the two CDMA carriers (Verizon and Sprint).

I'm pretty sure GSM isn't a global standard, and hasn't been for quite some time. 3G would be that standard, and iirc, 3G is (was?) also known as wcdma (wideband cdma). I was told once that the 850 3g band as used in America and the Telstra network here in oz has better range than the standard bands used in the rest of the world, but that could just be bollocks. What isn't bollocks tho is that Telstra's 3g network has hands down the best coverage in Australia, but imo, this is most likely due to saturation of access points, and given the relatively expensive prices of telstra 3g plans, I would expect as much.