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Dumb CDMA question but I have to ask.

N

Nevikan

Newbie

I have been told that you can buy a phone from Verizon and use it on Sprint because they are both CDMA. But are they confusing CDMA with SIM cards?:confused:
 
Nope, I don't think Sprint uses a SIM card except for the PTT iDEN phones. Although I don't know if the CDMA radio freqs that Sprint uses are the same as what Verizon uses. Pretty sure they aren't, though.
 
They use the same freqs. The reason you cant use a sprint phone on verizon (and vice versa) is because the ESN is carrier specific. You can flash a sprint phone with a VZW radio and rom but it won't activate under VZW service.
 
Knewz said:
They use the same freqs. The reason you cant use a sprint phone on verizon (and vice versa) is because the ESN is carrier specific. You can flash a sprint phone with a VZW radio and rom but it won't activate under VZW service.
Click to expand...

This is right, and I'm going to expand on it. Sprint/VZW can indeed activate any CDMA phone from each other, if they wanted. They simply don't want to. And that's about it.
 
basically theres three ways to go about getting a sprint phone on verizon and vice versa, one of which is illegal and I can mention, the other would be to get a job with verizon corporate and work your way up to the point you can add ESN's to the system (no CS rep can nor sales associate), the other is to find a good friend who doesnt mind ricking his job to help get you a phone from another carrier on.
 
ethically???

there has to be a legal point to it.. company can prosecute you.. if you mess with something that you are not allowed to.. add in an ESN that was not to be there.


you can unlock it... and go to one of the smaller CDMA carriers that dont care.
 
dan330 said:
ethically???

there has to be a legal point to it.. company can prosecute you.. if you mess with something that you are not allowed to.. add in an ESN that was not to be there.


you can unlock it... and go to one of the smaller CDMA carriers that dont care.
Click to expand...

Changing of the ESN is a federal offense. Thought you were talking about something else.
 
dan330 said:
you can unlock it... and go to one of the smaller CDMA carriers that dont care.
Click to expand...



Right. From what I understand, carriers like Metro PCS and Cricket will pretty much flash any CDMA phone for use on their network. I've seen enough eBay auctions of phones with bad ESNs that seem to claim this.
 
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