I’m currently using a billing plan on meteor.ie with my new HTC Hero which I also got from meteor. Everything works fine on the phone and I love it, but unfortunately, I keep getting an annoying error from time to time where the phone doesn’t seem to detect the SIM card or indicating ‘No Service’.
The solution to the problem is by turning off and then back on the phone—precarious, I know, but that’s what I’m doing. At this point I’m a bit annoyed since I’m having to do it quite often. I depend on the phone for communicating by several means—twitter, flickr, facebook, emails, not to mention and most importantly phone calls and SMS’s. So I’m getting worried that I might miss important calls or the phone might fail on important eventualities.
My guess is that there’s something going on with meteor.ie network but so far no certainty. Meteor has set up a twitter account: @meteor_mobile but they haven’t been able to give me an answer yet after a few DMs exchanged nor have they been updating their twitter posts since December 9th. Customer Service in store or online doesn’t have much idea either 
So, I’m wondering if anybody else out there, with their new HTC Hero here in Dublin (Ireland) have had issues with the meteor.ie network or seen fairly often the ‘No Service’ message? What about the customer service or feedback on the issue? Anything at all?
UPDATE: 21/12/2009
After an email exchange with a rep from meteor.ie, I’ve got asked these questions which I responded on the following extract.
1. When did the problem started?
Started as soon as I bought it. I had an HTC Hero for a few weeks, with different SIM card and it happened. Then lost and bought a new phone (different SIM card) and happened again up till today.
2. The nature of the problems e.g. inability to able or receive calls, bad quality of call, call dropping during conversation, failure when sending SMS’s
Check out blog post. No problem with anything as long as I don’t get the error.
3. How many signal bars does your handset display when you have problems
It usually happen when I’m not using the phone. Just when I touch the screen to do something with it, I get welcomed with the image I have on my blog post I don’t know the amount of bars.
4. Do you experience the same problems when you put your SIM card into another Meteor handset? If you have not tried this can you please do so
I don’t have another handset at the moment. And I’m not buying another.
No, I didn’t have a problem before with any of the previous handsets I had. Again, the problem happen from time to time randomly. Sometimes it doesn’t happen in a couple of days, and sometimes happen 2 or 3 times in a single day.
5. Do you experience the same problems when you put a different Meteor SIM card your handset? If you have not tried this can you please do so
I had two different SIM cards and I had the same problem with both on the two HTC Hero’s I had. Never had a problem with any phone before, just the HTC Hero.
6. What error message do you receive when you try to make calls or send text messages?
I don’t get any error messages when I try to make call or send messages. Again, the error happens when I click on the ‘home’ button to do something with it, not while I’m using it.
7. Are there other Meteor customers in the area with the same issue?
I don’t know. In the store they told me that they are, but they don’t know what it is. A customer rep told me that the phone is flawed and needed to modify the software in it.
8. Can you forward 3 examples of dropped calls that you made within the past 24 hours?
As I said on my blog post, and here as well, there wasn’t any call drops or anything wrong while I use the phone, The only problem I have is that when I don’t use the phone and then I press the ‘home’ button to do something, I get that screen I posted on my blog
Looks like this problem
has been reported on a forum thread at meteor.ie site.
One of my co-workers,
Paul, found
this forum thread that might just do the trick and from the several comments I did this:
Put your Virgin SIM card into another phone. Enable the SIM password (PIN1). Remember that PIN! Then put it back into the Hero. When prompted, key in the PIN, and you should be good.
If you don’t have a spare phone lying around (or cannot bother someone to lend you theirs for 10 minutes), then a replacement SIM may be easier.
from .dan!el post on the same site
Have a look at the entire thread on the forum. There are a few explanations and interesting insights to have an overall idea of the problem.
Anyway, it’s been an hour since I’ve done it and hopefully that will be the end of my conundrum (and all the others) *Knock on wood*. I’ll keep updating this post if this didn’t work.
UPDATE: 22/12/2009
Unfortunatelly the previously solution quoted didn’t work. About an hour after I did it, I got the ‘No Service’ screen again.
However, I tried something else which I don’t know if it’ll make any difference or not, but it is another option. I went to the phone Settings >> Security >> Set up SIM card lock >> Change SIM PIN; and then change the pin number from there. I don’t know if this will work or not, but like I said, it’s another option. Let’s see what happen
UPDATE: 26/12/2009
So that last option didn’t work either. As I kept exchanging a couple of messages with the meteor people, looks like they are going to replace it:
I have been advise by our technical team that the issue is not a network issue but a handset issue and I would advise you to return the phone to us so we can verify the fault and will issue you with a replacement phone.
This is it then. I’m going to do this and hopefully will be the end of our phone idyll.
