No Service on old 2g phone with gsm1900

[Peanutboy]

Hi, I am having trouble using my old Rogers Motorola V70 2G GSM1900 phone, I put in my simcard and tried searching for network and couldnt connect to the Rogers GSM1900 network and the phone says: no service.

The sim car works fine in my main phone (iPhone X) however it's in for service and I am using the old Motorola as backup... please help 🙂

[Pauly]

Hi Peanutboy.

10 years ago GSM was the dominant signal and they had towers everywhere. Its entirely possible that in your area, there may not be GSM operating in the 1900 frequency. The north americna V70 only had GSM 1900 so its possible your area does not use that band.

Of course your iPhone 10(X) will work and get signal, the Phone 10(x) will connect to any of the following frequencies:

2G bands	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G bands	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100
4G bands	LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 13(700), 17(700), 18(800), 19(800), 20(800), 25(1900), 26(850), 28(700), 29(700), 30(2300), 34(2000), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500), 66(1700/2100)

it may not connect at 1900 gsm but theres a dozen ohter frequencies it supports and rogers is likely broadcasting signal on ohter bands/freqencies the iphone connects with

[Peanutboy]

thanks for the insights, Pauly

I'm located in downtown Toronto it's hard to imagine there is no signal here...

However I've read somewhere people are saying it could be because the USIM I have, although it is backward compatible with 3G, 2.5G and 2G, it is simply not looking for those signals and is configured to look for LTE/4G only, I'm hoping there might be gsm commands I can punch into the phone where I force the USIM to look for all available networks?

[Pauly]

Rogers has committed to keep its 2G GSM network up until December 2020.

Its absolutely possible there is GSM signal where you are, but it may not be GSM in the 1900 band where you are, they could have GSM in the 850 band which your phone does not support, or worst case scenario, your PHONE has a faulty PA chip and can no longer receive signals. In order to test this out, place your sim card into another handset that operates on GSM 850/1900 and see if it gets signal where you are, if it does, your handsets a dud. This has nothing to do with a USIM forcing it to look for all available networks, a USIM has extra tables on it for phonebook/address book/email address storage that a regular 2G sim does not but other than that theyre fully backwards compatible.

[AmegoEV]

From

https://www.rogers.com/customer/small-business/support/article/business-network-updates#:~:text=As%2...

I have a 4G LTE phone – will I be impacted?

You may be impacted by this change.

Some older LTE phones and LTE phones purchased elsewhere may not be VoLTE compatible which means they connect to our 2G or 3G network to make voice calls and send text messages. If your device relies on 2G or 3G 1900 MHz you will lose service on or after June 7, 2021.

If you are using a non-VoLTE device, you should upgrade to a newer device from Rogers that is VoLTE compatible to avoid a service disruption.