Bring your own phone to your cell co. ?

[Lex]

How willing are the cell companies for customers to 'bring their own phone' and activate them? And where do you get PPC phone devices other than the cell company store? We see new PPC phones here every week but cell companies adopt only a small subset of devices.

[ADBrown]

If you're looking at a GSM carrier like Cingular or T-Mobile, it should be no problem to activate any GSM phone or PPC phone. Verizon and Sprint, forget it--they have highly restrictive policies about what devices they activate, particularly Verizon. Of course, they're incompatible with virtually all new devices anyway, so no real loss.

[Lex]

Cingular and T-Mobile have great phones and cruddy coverage in my area. Figures. :?

[Janak Parekh]

Verizon and Sprint, forget it--they have highly restrictive policies about what devices they activate, particularly Verizon.
Interestingly, I've heard the opposite: Sprint will absolutely refuse to activate any non-Sprint-branded phone. Verizon, on the other hand, dislikes it immensely but it's possible. (Well, 3 years ago when I was tracking this.)

Lex: the big problem anyway is that you're unlikely to find a unlocked CDMA phone that you'd want that the carriers don't sell already. What did you have in mind? Why don't the carriers' existing offers suffice?

--janak

[Lex]

I have 5 phones with a small Virginia-based company that carries less than the latest models but I've been with 'em so long (are you sitting down?) I pay $58 per month for unlimited talk time. This company just started offering the UT Starcomm PPC 6700 (OK PPC, poor phone) and the Palm Treo 650 (Palm - blah), neither of which I'm ready to jump for. I'm committed to Win / PPC due to years of software purchases.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

Not exactly on topic, but I find it mind-boggling that a carrier gets to limit your choice of phone - one of the advantages of being on a non-US GSM network I guess.

[Janak Parekh]

Not exactly on topic, but I find it mind-boggling that a carrier gets to limit your choice of phone - one of the advantages of being on a non-US GSM network I guess.
I don't want this thread to devolve into an off-topic discussion, but the basic point is that the market here evolved and works very differently for a number of reasons.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

I have 5 phones with a small Virginia-based company that carries less than the latest models but I've been with 'em so long (are you sitting down?) I pay $58 per month for unlimited talk time. This company just started offering the UT Starcomm PPC 6700 (OK PPC, poor phone) and the Palm Treo 650 (Palm - blah), neither of which I'm ready to jump for. I'm committed to Win / PPC due to years of software purchases.
Well, if they just started offering the PPC-6700, the Treo 700s might not be far away, which might be just what you need. Have you sent off a query to them if they'll resell those?

--janak

[Lex]

Good idea Janak. They'd prob. offer Treo 700w's this time next year if customers don't motivate them. :D