Hi,
Have you another idea why the r gsm band not shown with 'show cell 1'?
I'm not that familiar with the cell selection process, but I would guess it's possible that 'mobile' obeys the normal rules for cell selection and so maybe the gsm-r cell you see are 'barred' or required 'access class' that your sim doesn't have and so are rejected as potential cell. The sim also contains a list of forbidden PLMN that should not be considered at all so maybe the gsm-r network is listed there ...
You can probably see what's happening if you start a power scan and see if the network is scanned at all. (might want to redirect logs to a file for easier analysis)
Cheers,
Sylvain