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Carriers Have to Unlock Eligible Phones Beginning Today

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They may have to unlock phones...

Brad K

Feb 11, 2015, 11:43 AM
...but they can still decline to activate unlocked phones from another carrier.
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hman414

Feb 11, 2015, 11:52 AM
What do you mean by activate?

If you have a T-Mobile unlocked phone and put an at&t SIM in it, the phone will just start working.

No activation needed...
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Brad K

Feb 11, 2015, 11:56 AM
CDMA carriers need to make a change in the system for the phone to work.
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The Victor

Feb 11, 2015, 12:07 PM
AT&T has to do the same thing,not sure about T-Mobile ive never had their service
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The Victor

Feb 11, 2015, 12:06 PM
not as simple as that still have to call in to let them know have to update the phone and make a slight change or 2, dealt with this all the time
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T Bone

Feb 11, 2015, 11:53 AM
They can. but only CDMA carriers ever actually do. I mean, I suppose that GSM carriers could disconnect your account once they detect that you are not using one of their phones, but I've never heard of that happening, and even then there is nothing they can do to stop you from moving your SIM card around.

Generally if you use another carrier's equipment, they tell you that it isn't supported, not all features may work, and for tech support you're on your own.
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mobilemadness

Feb 11, 2015, 1:33 PM
With GSM carriers, they are concerned about the SIM card, not the phone. Your SIM card info is what matches up in their system. That's why you can switch phones without their knowing. Unlike GSM, with CDMA the phone itself holds the subscriber info with an ESN which must match up in the carrier's system. There is an ESN database with that carrier that tells it what phones are allowed on their network. To make a long story shot, GSM is much better. CDMA allows for too much carrier control over what you can do.
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The Victor

Feb 11, 2015, 2:00 PM


With GSM carriers, they are concerned about the SIM card, not the phone. Your SIM card info is what matches up in their system. That's why you can switch phones without their knowing.





may want to check your information on that one becuase thats not completely right, at least for AT&T, i worked mobility there for a few years

-yes you can switch out the phone without the carrier knowing but that doesnt mean your gonna get the full capabilities of that phone.
-in most cases for them you have to call to updat the phone or some things may not work, dealt with this a handful of times everyday
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mobilemadness

Feb 11, 2015, 5:40 PM
Yes you're right. They do have phone IMEI in their database as they sell the phones, so they have to track them. But with GSM, you can switch phones without carrier intervention. With CDMA you have to call up the carrier and beg them like a serf to let you activate the phone only for them to say no since it's not in their database.
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T Bone

Feb 11, 2015, 5:58 PM
I don't know about other CDMA carriers, but with Verizon you don't actually have to call to change your phone, and if you do call and ask them to change your phone, they will tell you to do it yourself.

For 3G phones, you can activate them on Verizon just by entering a certain code on the keypad (it's been a while since I did it, so I don't remember the code)

For LTE phones, all you have to do is swap the SIM.

Now, granted, that is if you're talking about Verizon phones. If you're trying to activate an unlocked LTE phone from another carrier on Verizon, then you do have to call them because their system only recognizes Verizon phones.
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thebriang

Feb 11, 2015, 9:09 PM
Wrong, and wrong.

You do actually have to contact VZW for them to attach the new ESN to your account (or do it online), then they just have you dial *228 to activate the phone. If you dont contact them in any way then how does the phone know it should be activated on Your account?

And calling them about another networks device wont matter, they wont activate it because for one it isnt in their ESN pool of VZW devices, and for two it most likely wont hit their frequency bands ala most GSM devices.

As of a couple months ago when I last tried, they wont even activate an nTelos device, which sells rebranded CDMA devices that Do connect to all the VZW bands.
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mobilemadness

Feb 11, 2015, 10:48 PM
CDMA is just too proprietary and locked down for my taste.
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Kaboodle

Feb 13, 2015, 8:12 PM
Newer Verizon phones using LTE SIM cards can just swap sim cards like GSM phones btw. Your username is where I work! 😛
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shawn1307

Feb 12, 2015, 8:51 AM
Actually your wrong i had Verizon for years and i switched phones almost every month and all i ever had to do was just swap my sim card over to the other phone never had to call them or anything and never once had an issue.....i now have At&t and it works the exact same way
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T Bone

Feb 12, 2015, 10:32 AM
With Verizon, you don't need to change the IMEI in the system, and the only reason you ever have to do it with at&t is if you're changing from iPhone to Android or Blackberry, because these have special data plans, and you have to change the IMEI to change the data plan. Now, if you're swapping between two iPhones or two Android phones, or two Blackberries, nothing really needs to be updated, but at&t just prefers that everything be up to date.
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T Bone

Feb 12, 2015, 10:17 AM
No, the last time I called Verizon and asked them to activate customer owned equipment for me, they refused and told me to do it myself.
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