An update on my international iPhone travails!

I was in Canada this weekend past. AT&T Customer Care was closed when I crossed the border, so I shut the phone off until 6am CDT, which is when it reopens. I menu-clicked through to seeing an agent with a miscellaneous problem. I asked for EDGE to be turned off, the agent was confused as to why I'd want to do that, but said it would be done. He asked me to power cycle the device.

I did. The EDGE icon was still visible.

A few hours later I called back, and this time the agent told me it was impossible to do what I was asking. Yet whatever he did managed to knock off the EDGE connection. I spent my weekend in Canada not worrying about runaway EDGE charges.

Upon return to the US, I immediately called and followed the same steps as above, yet I did not manage to get EDGE turned back on. I called back three times, and every time the agent said it would be turned on, but nothing worked. Now, two days after my return (and with visual voicemail not working), I called AT&T again, this time eager for some answers.

After being bumped from AT&T to Apple tech support back to AT&T and then to AT&T iPhone Activations, I finally landed in the lap of a helpful tech support person from AT&T. In the meantime, Apple had me reset my network settings (thereby losing my wi-fi passwords). AT&T also threatened me with having all my visual voicemail deleted.

But finally the agent at tech support fixed things, and she gave me the secret tradespeak jargon to get EDGE deactivated/reinstated in the future.

So, to deactivate EDGE on your iPhone for when you are roaming internationally, call AT&T Customer Care, and get transferred to their tech support (but not Apple's tech support). Then ask for them to "please suspend my internet service in Snooper." Afterward, as them to "please reinstate my internet service in Snooper." Snooper is, apparently, the internal system that handles the EDGE connections.

Another hint is to remind the agents that you have an iPhone. The techie told me that it was unclear which system to change at first, since the billing did not demonstrate that my service had been suspended in the first place.

UPDATE: So despite the glowing review above, after my iPhone had been reconnected to EDGE, the Visual voicemail still did not work. Though now I did not even get an option to check my email the old-fashioned way. Just an error, and the ability to play my old, saved messages.

After another twenty or so minutes with tech support (AT&T pinged me to Apple, who ponged me back to AT&T), the people at AT&T were able to get Visual voicemail to work again. The problem? The activation had to be resent, as "features were not provisioned properly" earlier in the day.

I cannot believe what a PITA this procedure has been. But now Visual voicemail works.