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2 phones 1 sim

coair73x

coair73x

Lurker
I have 2 Metro store bought phones and one is a Samsung J7 and one is a LG Stylo 2 plus. I have one unlimited $60 plan sim and they restrict me switching the sim between phones unless I make a call to customer service and hope they understand what I want to do. Why is this so restrictive with Metro PCS? T-Mobile lets you do it all day as does AT&T. Anyone else get lucky and have 2 IMEI numbers set to a Metro PCS sim?
 
coair73x said:
I have 2 Metro store bought phones and one is a Samsung J7 and one is a LG Stylo 2 plus. I have one unlimited $60 plan sim and they restrict me switching the sim between phones unless I make a call to customer service and hope they understand what I want to do. Why is this so restrictive with Metro PCS? T-Mobile lets you do it all day as does AT&T. Anyone else get lucky and have 2 IMEI numbers set to a Metro PCS sim?
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Because it's a CDMA network I think. With CDMA the account is tied and registered to the phone's MEID or ESN, and not the SIM. In fact it only needs a SIM because of 4G LTE I believe. In the past CDMA networks and phones just didn't use SIMs, except in China for China Telecom. And probably you can't register two devices simultaneously, unless you have joint account or something, that's just a guess as I'm not in the US myself. Probably have to check with Metro PCS for that.

With GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile, or just about any other GSM carrier in the world, you can swap SIM and use as many phones as you like with it.

MEID(Mobile Equipment ID) is basically the equivalent of IMEI, but for CDMA/EVDO networks.
 
mikedt said:
Because it's a CDMA network I think. With CDMA the account is tied and registered to the phone's MEID or ESN, and not the SIM. In fact it only needs a SIM because of 4G LTE I believe. In the past CDMA networks and phones just didn't use SIMs, except in China for China Telecom. And probably you can't register two devices simultaneously, unless you have joint account or something, that's just a guess as I'm not in the US myself. Probably have to check with Metro PCS for that.

With GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile, or just about any other GSM carrier in the world, you can swap SIM and use as many phones as you like with it.

MEID(Mobile Equipment ID) is basically the equivalent of IMEI, but for CDMA/EVDO networks.
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It USED to be a CDMA network. T-Mobile changed it all over to GSM a while back.
 
Metro is GSM all over now. I hope they add this option in the future. I have cricket also and it is easy to do.
 
I have Verizon phones and I can pop my Maxx 2s sim into one of my older Windows Phone and it will work. The only limitation is that both phones need to have activated on Verizon's network at some point.
 
That is really bizarre: SIM swapping is a central design feature of GSM. There is no technical reason at all for a GSM network to care what phone you use.

Of course the network does see your IMEI (that's how you blacklist a stolen handset), so they can add software to block this if it doesn't match a particular one that they have associated to your SIM, but that's not standard. So if they are doing that it's a piece of control freakery they've specifically added - possibly a corporate decision made because they were used to that level of control in their CDMA days and didn't want to give it up? I can't think of any _good_ reason for them to do that.
 
Hadron said:
That is really bizarre: SIM swapping is a central design feature of GSM. There is no technical reason at all for a GSM network to care what phone you use.

Of course the network does see your IMEI (that's how you blacklist a stolen handset), so they can add software to block this if it doesn't match a particular one that they have associated to your SIM, but that's not standard. So if they are doing that it's a piece of control freakery they've specifically added - possibly a corporate decision made because they were used to that level of control in their CDMA days and didn't want to give it up? I can't think of any _good_ reason for them to do that.
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Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking also. They were used to it when they were CDMA so they wanted that for GSM also. I'm not one to be swapping phones allot, so it doesn't bother me. I can see how it'd be a nuisance for someone that swaps phones though.
 
Hadron said:
That is really bizarre: SIM swapping is a central design feature of GSM. There is no technical reason at all for a GSM network to care what phone you use.

Of course the network does see your IMEI (that's how you blacklist a stolen handset), so they can add software to block this if it doesn't match a particular one that they have associated to your SIM, but that's not standard. So if they are doing that it's a piece of control freakery they've specifically added - possibly a corporate decision made because they were used to that level of control in their CDMA days and didn't want to give it up? I can't think of any _good_ reason for them to do that.
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alfick3 said:
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking also. They were used to it when they were CDMA so they wanted that for GSM also. I'm not one to be swapping phones allot, so it doesn't bother me. I can see how it'd be a nuisance for someone that swaps phones though.
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Maybe this is to encourage Metro - sold handsets only, a requisite of the grandfathered Unlimited Plan. Or to prevent those users from auto killing the plan and / or don't have the necessary software resources... evidenced by the abysmal account management interface / mediocre website.
 
I think as an alternative you can create an online MetroPC account and do it yourself. I've done it, but was never switching between phones on a daily basis or anything.

one of the local stores would charge something like $10 to change the phones, but the rep nicely said, I could do it myself free online.
 
gelige said:
I think as an alternative you can create an online MetroPC account and do it yourself. I've done it, but was never switching between phones on a daily basis or anything.

one of the local stores would charge something like $10 to change the phones, but the rep nicely said, I could do it myself free online.
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Maybe you can do this with Metro-branded phones, but for non-Metro/BYOD devices you always have to call them to activate the ESN. It doesn't work online.
 
I wish they would change this. Looks like I'll be calling them tonight to switch from my Nexus 6 to my Nexus 4.
 
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