Travelling home tonight on the Sandringham train line, my phone seems to have worked underground at Flinders Street for the first time.

Usually it drops out for a few moments after the train leaves platform 13 on the way to Richmond and is patchy most of the way.

After Richmond, I put my phone in my pocket and read the newspaper.

When I got off at Elsternwick station, it showed no signal, even outside the station.

My guess is that it got lost around South Yarra, got confused whether it should use NextG, 3G, or 2G, and gave up.

I changed the settings to use UMTS (NextG/3G) only via Settings->Phone->Network->Network mode.

Apparently Next G works fine in the city loop, so maybe I don't need 2G at all any more.

Here's hoping!

Update: June 22, 2009

I came home via the city (underground) loop tonight.

I had no coverage except for after Parliament a few hundred metres before going above ground.

On the upside, my phone was working at Richmond and at Elsternwick.