Carrier Selection Menu?

[iMacZealot]

So, I powered my iPhone on tonight about five minutes ago after just syncing it with iTunes and I go into settings, and underneath WiFi, I see a "Carrier" menu. I'll select it, and it will move onto the next screen, and just now, I have a choice between Automatic, AT&T, and AT&T (????).

Has anybody else noticed this? I searched and got nothing. I'm running a virgin 1.1.2 build 3B48b.

 

[iMacZealot]

...and after syncing again, it's gone.

 

[psycho bob]

I think this is a carry over from European models. My unlocked iPhone in the UK has this menu populated with all the major UK carriers apart from 3 for obvious reasons.

Quite what the point of it is I don't know. Any ideas? Roaming?

 

[alFR]

I think it's so you can select a particular carrier when roaming, so if your home carrier has a special agreement with an overseas carrier you can make sure that you use that one when roaming.

 

[cbrain]

It's for overseas carriers, it's just like the men on my RAZR on Vodaphone where I can select carriers such as Cingular.

 

[iMacZealot]

It's meant for more than just international roaming. That menu is also there to switch between domestic roaming carriers as well (though if you have a fraction of coverage with AT&T, the tower won't let you switch.)

I bought my iPhone in this country in September and haven't done anything to it. I just think that it's weird that it suddenly appears on my iPhone under no apparent cause, and then disappears a few minutes later.

So nobody in America has seen this menu?

 

[Eddiestein]

I'm in the US and have this menu on my unlocked iPhone (1.1.1, week 44) using T-Mobile.

The options are Automatic, T-Mobile, and AT&T. I figured that T-Mobile has a roaming agreement with AT&T but when I choose that and try to place a call, it tells me my selected network is no longer available. So I left it at T-Mobile.

Eddie

 

[iMacZealot]

I'm in the US and have this menu on my unlocked iPhone (1.1.1, week 44) using T-Mobile.

The options are Automatic, T-Mobile, and AT&T. I figured that T-Mobile has a roaming agreement with AT&T but when I choose that and try to place a call, it tells me my selected network is no longer available. So I left it at T-Mobile.

Eddie

if your home carrier has a dot of coverage, you can use that and only that carrier.

I just thought it was weird that it showed up on my locked iPhone.

 

[Eddiestein]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A109a Safari/419.3)

Indeed, it is set to T-Mobile only. I would never roam on NSAT&T.

Eddie

 

[Dave B]

I drove from LA to Washington DC with my unlocked tmobile iPhone and it picked up lots of different carriers on the way, AT&T being one of them. Quite a few I didn't even recognise but the phone still worked fine for phone calls and sms.

Dave