Since you all are the techies, I thought I'd post in here.

When I'm back home, sometimes my cell phone calls go through Canada because we'reso close to the border. Right now, I have Cingular nation so I don't have long distance charges - as long as it's in the US.

I know my dad has a plan where he can call anywhere in the US and Canada and the only time it would be long-distance is if the call goes from somewhere in Canada to another place in Canada where long-distance charges apply. (For example, Toronto to Toronto is local, but Toronto to Vancouver would be long-distance.) However, I can't seem to find a plan like that even on the website of my dad's carrier (Verizon).

Does anyone know of a cell phone company that has a plan like that?

Or...I tried asking Cingular (my provider) if there was a way I could get my phone to not go through Canada, but they said I'd have to buy a new phone. I'm not so sure if this is the case or if they were trying to 'fool' me into getting a new phone. I havea Nokia 5165 and I thought there was a way to change the 'roam' thing so it would stay on the Cingular towers and not use Canadian towers.

Not that it is any help to you but people here have a similar problem, if they go to some parts of the island the calls divert to France! What should be local calls turn into international calls, not funny apparently - I don't use one of those new-fangled things so it doesn't matter to me.

Yeah - and it's pretty bad if you're trying to call 911 (emergency number). My brother had a car accident on the US side of the river and when my mom called 911 from the scene, the call ended up going through Canada. Luckily, it wasn't a life-or-death accident because it took a few minutes for both my mom and the operator to realise they were in different countries.

Since I live near the German border, occasionally my phone will choose a German tower. I have a Nokia 3310 and it has the option to choose the network either automatically or manual. So as soon as I see a German company name on my screen, I switch to the manual mode. I think your cell phone must have the same possibility to choose a network, LadyM. Maybe somebody here even knows how to activate it...

Hmm... Mine doesn't say what company it is, I think.

Edit to add:

Actually, it says something like 'CIngular extend' when I'm not in my home area... but it does that both when I'm going through Canada and when I'm in the US away from the DC area.