CDMA phones and US Cellular

Can any CDMA phone be used on US Cellular? Or is there something specific they need to have to operate on this network?

US Cellular will not activate any phone that was not purchased from them. Also, they lock their phones, so once you have used it on US Cellular, you can't use the phone on anybody else's network.

If you are a techie, and you can get a friendly USCC rep to give you the unlock code, you CAN then activate a USCC phone on another network.

-way

hey Waywith,

Does US Cellular restrict handsets by ESN as Sprint does?

Yes.

That is incorrect.
I have had two verizon phones activated on us cellular. The trick is to have it all ready pre-programmed in the nam and have the nam that you programmed set to the active one. Then just keep going to different people/stores and tell them its all ready programmed and just ask if they will just switch the esn on their computers. they will say they don't do it and that you get bad signal and what not, but just tell them its temporary and that you will buy a phone once you have more money. Say your old phone isnt usable anymore. Also make sure you set your roaming options to home only. The second one that i got activated took two tries until i got someone to activate it for me. By activate i mean all they did was enter the esn into their computers. Try and get someone young it usually works.
I am certain that every single cdma phone will work on us cellular as long as you can manually get into the programming of the phone. Sometimes they try and do the easy/automatic programming from the towers, but since its a verizon phone it tries to access the verizon towers to program. Thats the main reason of why it wont work when lazy employees try the shortcut programming method.

I have a motorola v26...something and a nokia 5415(i think). Both were verizon. I am currently using the nokia. Reception is the same as my other phones that i have had before.

yes us cellular is cdma and yes the phone can be activated over the phone if the saleman wants to give directions on how to do it.

so say you did buy an unlocked CDMA phone that US Cellular did not offer and got it activated over the phone, would all the features such as pix msg/internet/etc. work?

Just want to bump this thread up...

I am in a similar situation where I would like to use a Sprint Blackberry on US cellular.

I have been told by several people including US cell and independent cell reps that its too complicated to do.

Any advice on what I should try?? THANKS!!

i agree.i have the same issue from time to time

What exactly do we follow is it there is possibility of using cdma phone in US without going through an undue stress or not?

US Cellular does not track ESNs. While in store they will not activate a phone suspected of being from another carrier. However over the phone does work. You can activate nearly ANY CDMA phone through US Cell by "backdooring" it over the phone. Tell the rep you speak to you bought it off ebay, or craigslist or some such. If they ask if it is a US Cellular phone, say "yes". The hitches: If it is not a Samsung, LG, Motorola, or Keocera they will not activate it. Workaround? Tell them it's one of those makers, and have a model number ready that is one US Cellular supports. EasyEdge (US Cell's mini net app service) will not work on non-USCC phones because it is partially intergrated in the handset software. If you have a smartphone it MUST be either Blackberry or Windows Mobile. This is just a guess but I do not believe that any other sort of smartphone would work properly. Last couple of little hitches, you could not get it repaired. Bring a non-USCC phone to a technician and the first thing they would do is flash to more compatible software and assume you were tinkering in your phones software. If it is not a model supported by USCC then it would not be flashed and at best you would walk out with a broken phone. At worst they would file a remedy ticket with customer servive. Also, if you ever need to file an insurance claim your phone will be replaced with the model you told them, not with something comparible to the phone you actually have. As far as I know there is no REAL penalty for sneaking a phone onto your account that never came from USCC, just the risk of losing the repair service and small parts of the data not working properly. Hope this has been helpful

If you know what you're doing, you can activate any CDMA phone over the telephone. It's not a big deal. All features work if you have the correct plans available. I have a friend that has a Verizon phone, but has USCC service. It's a smartphone and we called, had it activated, upgraded to the data package, and was done! Everything works. The only thing is you can not get insurance protection because it's another carriers phone. But everything else is GOOD!

Sprint is not compatible (AFAIK) because their network is the digital PCS vs. regular cdma like Verizon but then that's what I was told last year. It may be that the BlackBerry hardware is one that supports multiple networks, though - in that case the advice given above might work.

I once activated a Verizon Kyocera Palm phone with USCellular but in the end it was so much of a hassle that I ended up going to a GSM unlocked phone with a no contract network.

Terry