vB Easy Archive - Quick question about phones..

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Quick question about phones..
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Posted by: JaiZero

Can any CDMA phone with a clean ESN be used on any CDMA network i.e. Sprint, Alltel, Verizon, etc.. For instance can a Verizon phone be activated on Alltel's service and vice versa?

thanks

Posted by: shadowman714

Technically, yes.

Beaurocratically, no. At least that's what I've found here.

All the CDMA service providers here in Canada maintan a "white-list" of the ESNs of phones they have sold. And only phones with an ESN on this list can be activated.

It's bullsh*t, but it seems like the service providers think this will force you to buy a phone from them or something.

There may be a few exceptions... I heard TracFone has special custom firmware in their phones because part of the billing and accounting system is run on the customer's handset. I could be wrong, but it sounds like TracFone runs a proprietary protocol variation which no standard phone can understand.