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I am visiting Poland and want to get mobile internet. I bought 3 SIMs (Orange, Plus, T-Mobile) - all starter kits for 5 PLN. I guess they all should work (at least the T-Mobile starter says "activate by inserting SIM into phone and making a call" in English on it). I tried in a place where network was available for all 3, however I could not register a single SIM onto network - do I miss something here?

Seems like it is necessary to activate the SIMs somehow... but I dont know how. I think all the starters include few prapaid PLNs for services - data or voice. The phone should register onto network to receive calls at least, but it does not...

I tried with Samsung J5 and Samsung S3 mini. Here are the screenshots I got (same for all 3 SIMs) - funny one message is in Polish even though the phone's language is English:

enter image description here enter image description here

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    Are you sure your phones aren't locked?
    – JonathanReez ♦
    Jul 18, 2016 at 22:49
  • This doesn't sound like a SIM lock to me. Can you do a network search on your phone? You may also have a network preference for 2G/3G/4G that is incompatible. This will be somwehere in settings
    – Berwyn
    Jul 18, 2016 at 23:07
  • I found out the phone indeed is SIM-locked. Seems like I failed to do my homework thoroughly before asking, because SIM-lock was the least I expected in my case :(. Thanks for all answers anyways!
    – Kozuch
    Jul 19, 2016 at 9:35
  • The final problem was the IMEI of the Android phone has been erased by custom ROM update. This prevented the phone to connect to ANY network at all.
    – Kozuch
    Jun 7, 2021 at 15:40

2 Answers 2

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It sounds like your phone is SIM-locked:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock

This is imposed by the operator you bought the phone from, and has nothing to do with Poland. Contact your home operator and see if they can unlock it for you. This is usually a paid service.

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  • I found out the phone indeed is SIM-locked. Seems like I failed to do my homework thoroughly before asking, because SIM-lock was the least I expected in my case :(. Thanks for all answers anyways!
    – Kozuch
    Jul 19, 2016 at 9:35
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It sounds like your phone is Blocked in Poland ie reported as lost or stolen:

Blacklists of stolen devices

This has nothing to do with your provider, your phone(s) might work without any problems in other countries. If your phone(s) was/were SIM-Locked you would get a different message before loading the home screen, something like the this

enter image description here

I am afraid you'll need to get a mobile broadband or a new phone

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  • How a SIM lock manifests depends a lot on the operators, OS versions etc - it's not always going to be a clean dialog like your screenshot.
    – lambshaanxy
    Jul 19, 2016 at 12:52

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