Q: iPhone has no service but signal is strong and wifi available

WiFi has nothing to do with cellular signals.

So you confirmed that you have a plan that allows international roaming? And your phone is not in Airplane mode?

To clarify: Did you call Verizon's Global Support Team before you left the country? Did you give the the SIM card number for the Vodafone SIM in your iPhone 4S? If you need to contact Verizon Tech support from a foreign country, use this number:

908-559-4899

This isnt really a troubleshooting step for you phone, but an option that may be available to you depending on where your travels have taken you is that you can actually purchase sim cards for a reasonable price that will allow your phone to work using the towers available, just something to think about

-----Also make sure that in your settings that you have the roaming settings set to Voice & Data as well as your international roaming setting turned on, purchasing a local sim card should resolve this issue if verizon has unlocked that service, which from what you have said it sounds like they did, so next i would just go purchase a sim card, see if that works, if/when it does contact verizon to straighten things out

tbarrack1022 wrote:

 

but an option that may be available to you depending on where your travels have taken you is that you can actually purchase sim cards for a reasonable price that will allow your phone to work using the towers available, just something to think about

This would require Verizon to unlock the phone. Verizon does not sell the iPhone 4S unlocked, though they will unlock it for customers in good standing.

The customer had stated in another post with the same question she had been in good contact with Verizon and that she would have service at her new location, that said since im assuming the are she has moved to, being in south africa CDMA is probably not supported, Verizon would have known and probably acknowledged this, but who knows, i hope for her sake they will allow her to use that service, i dont see why they wouldnt, but with no service she really has no way to contact them

Verizon will only unlock a phone if you specifically ask them. If you were to just tell them you were going abroad, they would enable international features, including internation GSM roaming.

It is also my understanding that there are phones availble in many foreign countries from which the numbe I provided will work.