«Abonnenten har slått av telefonen

Eller er ikke tilgjengelig for øyeblikket. Prøv igjen senere. The subscriber has turned off the phone or is not available at the moment. Please try again later.”

That’s what you’ll hear if you try to reach me on my good old Norwegian mobile number (yea, I did call myself to make sure I got it right). Getting a sparkling new English number was both painfully easy and annoyingly problematic at the same time. It’s safe to say the relationship between the sim card and me is complicated, but we have been through counseling and there is still hope.
This happened:

I went to a store called “Phones 4 you”. They were very kind, and after popping a “trial sim” into my phone and my phone didn’t spit it right back out, I got a permanent sim with Vodafone as my phone network. I paid 10£ and now I have 100 min, 300 texts and 50MB web access for 30 days. All good and well so far.

Then I left the store, turned my phone off and on and discovered I had no pin code. Hmh. Alright. Turn off and on again, same result. Return to the shop, the guy who sold me the sim was busy, so a blond guy spoke to me. He insisted that the pin code (and subsequently the PUK code as well) was part of the phone’s workings and had nothing to do with the sim card, and that with a new sim card the phone would have reverted to its original PIN code. No matter what I said he kept firm on this, and in the end I left.

So, out on the street, I popped in my Norwegian sim. Hmh. Pin code came back into action. I switched sim again, and this time I had to punch in a pin to access my phone with the English one as well. However, the PIN that works with my Norwegian sim in didn’t work with the English one. But hey, hold on, this means the pin follows the sim, doesn’t it? And now I needed the PUK code after entering wrong PIN three times.

Deciding against return to the shop for a third time, I took matters into my own hands. After calling home to look for instructions in the manuals that came with the phone, just in case the PUK code followed the phone (like Mr.whosenameIdon’tknow from Phones 4 you claimed), call my Norwegian mobile network to see if they knew if there is some monumental difference between a Norwegian and English phone setup, I was none the wiser.

So I’ll have to buy an English phone then? Now that’ll be a waste of money.

Returning to the guest house, I got a last idea. Once on internet on my laptop, I typed in www.vodafone.co.uk. Like DNB (my bank), they had a nifty little function; namely a chat, so I could get right in touch with them without calling or sending an email.

After two minutes, the guy on the other end (after taking my name and phone number) had equipped me with my PIN and PUK. I punched the PUK into my phone, and it unlocked like a dream.

So, Mr.whosenameIdon’tknow, the PIN and PUK follows the phone and not the sim, does it?