HiValleyRanch

Hello, new to this board and sorta new to the world of cell phones, although I've had one for years, but haven't looked into many options.
I had one of the earliest Nokia's years ago.
Getting a Nokia with my go phone plan and thinking about another one for my tracphone plan.
But here are my questions. Didn't know where else to ask this.


I was told by an ATT rep, that if I purchase a cheap GO PHONE plan phone like their Nokia 2610 for 9.99, I could take the SIM card out and use it in my UNLOCKED treo PDA phone.
I thought this was a neat idea, because I do not use a cell phone that much and could have my usual PDA act a an emergency phone without being tied into any service.
So I was under the impression that one can use their SIM card in any unlocked phone as long as they were compatible using the GSM network.
Including the nokia n75 I'm looking at.

So then I found out that tracphone (which I have been using for years) uses both the CDMS and GSM networks. They sell a NOKIA 2600 GSM phone that take a SIM card. So I thought, why not take the SIM card out of the nokia and use it in my GSM treo PDA phone which I unlocked.

When I called TRACFONE to talk to a tech, the "tech" told me that I could not do that because their SIM cards are phone specific, using the particular phones IMEA (serial number) as the identify number.
That if you put their SIM card into an unlocked phone it would not work because the serial numbers are different.

So what is the REAL story on this. I have read over and over that you can use a SIM card in any unlocked phone and it would work.
Please enlighten me more on this stuff. It's pretty new to me.
Thanks, HVR