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AT&T Wireless Phone "Upgrades" Aren't
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T Wireless is requiring customers in parts of California and New York and elsewhere to "upgrade" their phones and offering free replacements. The catch? In most cases the upgrades have worse features than the phones they're replacing."
Wrong. ALL GSM phones use SIM cards. And since this upgrade is only for GSM phones operating at 1900MHz, all affected phones use SIM cards.
Don't Panic
I'm currently shopping around for a new provider, though the crazy set of plans and prices that all the firms offer makes it impossible to compare plans or even figure out how much the service will cost.
Where does one begin?
Tried the phone for a couple of hours and just gave up on it. Sent it back. Thankfully you can switch the SIM card back to the old phone so easily. If you have a T68, you are stepping way down with this phone! BMW to Yugo. You're a fool if you keep it. And now, of course, it'll be a case of once bitten, twice shy if they try it again.
I don't know who to blame more: AT&T or Sony-Ericson. For AT&T, this will go down as one the stupidest tech marketing blunders in a while! For Sony-Ericson, well, the engineering team that designed the T226 should be taken out and shot. At the very least they should barred from designing any consumer electronic product - for life!
When the T68 came out I thought maybe Ericson might finally have figured out what Nokia does right - with this phone it's apparent the T68 was just a lucky, but utterly random accident. :-p
Dude, all GSM phones need a SIM card to identify themselves to the network. There is no way a GSM phone can work without one. As another poster posted, there are probably very few (maybe just one or two) phones that have SIM cards non-replacable by the user. But even these phones do infact have sim cards!
Your friends probably use phones that work on CDMA/TDMA.
Don't Panic
I got the letter on Friday from ATTWS, saying that they were sending me a new phone. They are supposedly providing return shipping for the old phone but the letter didn't say anything about HAVING to return the old phone to get the new phone. I'll be interested in reading the fine print when the new phone shows up but I'm not worried. I have no interest in downgrading from my T68i to this lesser phone, and I have no interest in returning either my old phone or the new one they are sending to me. More information can be found at: http://sonyericssont226upgrade.com/
Now, some background information on the return issue - I used to manage the returns department for a dotcom and thus I was supposed to know a bit about returns issues. I cannot name the specific regulation by name, but the FTC says that if a merchant sends you a product that you didn't order, it is your's for free. They can ask for you to pay for it, they can ask for you to return it, they can call you bad names for keeping it, but they cannot require you to return it nor can they require you to pay for it. Keep this in mind for this new phone and any future boxes that end up at your door step. Now, since we are all ATTWS subscribers and signed some contract when we got our service, they might actually be able to force us to return the new phones or pay for them, but I'm not sure.
Now here's the part about the whole deal that makes me worried. Why are they sending new phones for free to people? Why aren't they just letting us keep our outdated phones and stop selling them, and start selling the new phones? What is the benefit of sending me a new phone and asking for me to return my old phone? At first I thought they wanted to give me a new phone with more features so that I'd send more SSM messages, or download ringtones, or do something else that would generate more revenue for ATTWS, but I don't think that is the case, if it was I think they would have given out even cooler phones. Frankly I cannot use a phone without Bluetooth, I just cannot, if the new phone had all the features of my old phone and some bonuses it would be a different story but... ATTWS is doing something it doesn't have to. They are giving out free phones when they don't have to. It doesn't make any sense, they should just stop selling the old phones. I think there is more to the story unfortunately, and I think that the end effect is that sooner or later my old phone will no longer work with ATTWS.
Will someone please file a class action lawsuit. I'm already ready to sign up.
RTFA. The phones being "upgraded" all use GSM in only one of AT&T's two GSM frequency bands. They want you to upgrade to phones that support both of the bands, for purposes of coverage. (if you can only use one of the bands, all the cell towers in the other band are off-limits to you.)
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
WRONG! There are three phones currently available that have BOTH GSM and TDMA! Actually two of them even include analog AMPS. They are: The Sony-Ericsson T62u - GSM 850/1900 w/GPRS TDMA 800/1900 AMPS 800 The Nokia 6340i - GSM 850/1900 TDMA 800/1900 AMPS 800 and The Siemens S46 - GSM 900/1900 w/GRPS TDMA 800/1900 So yes, there are ways to have your cake and eat it too, with GSM and TDMA. These phones are known as GAIT phones, and will give you the best coverage possible. Currently AT&T Wireless only sells the SOny t62u and the Siemens s46. Cingular sells the 6340i. If there are any more questions feel free to ask.
I had a nice, top of the line Nokia - a couple years later, calls would randomly disconnect. I used equipment replacement twice and get back the same model. Finally they tell me my phone is no longer compatible with their network! I asked to be transfered to the guy who could close my account, since my phone was entirely useless. Instead they transferred me to the guy who sent me a new phone, which did turn out to be a marginal upgrade due to two years of advancement in the technology. Eventually they even gave me a nice credit on my account for the months my phone was useless. However, I had to threaten to terminate my account before getting any results.
Ok, you win. This has to be a terminology problem Let's reformulate: There is no GSM network in the US, because according to your specs they would have to provide SIMS, and none of them does. So those AT&T phones we're talking about are not GSMs. End of argument.
You're either incredibly foolish or a troll (my money is on the latter), but I'll reply anyway: YES there ARE GSM networks in the U.S.A. and YES every single one of them sells phones that require SIM (subscriber identity module) cards. As other posters who are actually clued in have noted, it's part of the GSM spec for a phone to have a SIM card.
There were two types of SIM cards: the original, old Type I cards, which looked like a credit card, and the newer Type II cards, which are the thumbnail-sized cards. You can see pretty pictures here. Type I cards haven't been used since the mid-90s. The last Type I-accepting phone I remember seeing was (IIRC) a GSM Motorola StarTac.
The only major GSM carrier in the U.S.A. until 3 or 4 years ago was Voicestream (Western Wireless), which became T-Mobile after the Deutsche Telekom buyout. As part of the upstart of 2.5G services here in the U.S., other companies such as AT&T and BellSouth started building up GSM networks.
You can see the "proof" that they're GSM networks by Googling for "BellSouth GSM" or "AT&T GSM." Other proof that there are GSM phones: I just took the battery off my Sony Ericsson T68i and...suprise! A GSM SIM card! Just like the ones I used to put in the back of every customer's phone back when I was a VoiceStream dealer. Just like the GSM SIM cards inside every single "next generation" AT&T phone, and every single T-Mobile phone. So forth and so on ad nauseum.
In related news, I've blacklisted you for making repeated stupid statements without taking 10 seconds to STFG.
I used to work for AT&T Wireless. ALL GSM phones require a SIM card (Contains your Home SID, ICCID, MDN aka your phone#). TDMA phones require no SIM as they have an EEPROM built-in to store the NAM - Numerically Assigned Module (containg Home SID, ESN, MDN).
One multi-band phone (that is TDMA/GSM capable) actually requires a special SIM card for the dual functionality. This SIM module contains the EEPROM equivalent for the TDMA programming of the phone separate from the GSM side of the SIM. This is the Sony T26U (it also utilizes Analog towers too). This a true GSM phone with a TDMA overlay. The Siemans S46 has a built in ROM and uses a SIM, this is a TDMA phone with a GSM overlay.
But all GSM phones require a SIM card, this is not only a spec for the GSM network, but if a GSM phone (assuming multi-band, ie. Siemans S46) is running without a SIM, it would only run in TDMA mode, and if not a multi-band, it would not complete its "power up" to an operational state; it would error and demand a SIM to be entered. The Sony T62U will not function without a SIM.
Most GSM phones are NOT multi-band. They would therefor require a SIM. Multi-band phones generally don't come with the "eye candy" that other phones do (ie. Cam, Colour, Blue Tooth). These are more for people who need a phone to be a phone all the time (best coverage over multiple networks) and not a toy.
For a little insight... Thanks to LNP or line number portability there is now an MIN/MDN combination within the HLR (Home Location Registry). The MDN is your Mobile Dialable Number but you also have a MIN which is the Mobile Identification Number (or Routing Number). Some of you AT&T customers may have seen on your TDMA phones you manually programmed a number into your phone that was not your wireless number. This is what allows the porting. People dial your "phone #" which goes to the company who owns your number range (from 0000-9999), who have that number cross referenced with the your current carrier. They then send your call to the carrier your are currently with and your carrier then address' your phone by an assigned routing number (and it is a number in a range they currently own!).
Example: You are with Sprint from 555-0000 and move to AT&T. Your phone is programmed with your ROUTING# 555-1234. You can place calls, but not receive them. Your old phone is still fully functional, so you can RECEIVE/PLACE calls there). AT&T initiates a port request to Sprint. They send Sprint a request with your Name/Addr/Cell#/Acct#/. Sprint setups the link in their systems to Switch/Forward your calls to AT&T. Once the link on Sprints end is completed that allows INCOMING calls to move from Sprint to AT&T and through their switches and to your cell phone via a cross reference to your assigned routing#. Your Sprint account is also closed at this point and your old phone stops working. But ALL your incoming calls go to the carrier who owns your number, and is then sent to your current carrier. This is transparent with GSM as all programming is done Over the Air.
If you have a routing number in your phone, and you call it; you will get someone else as routing numbers are actual phone numbers, but are internal only. All numbers are now used twice. Once as a link from phone to network (routing#, internal, dynamic), and once as a link between network and the world (dialable#, external, static). With the way this system works, they all started with your MIN==MDN, but when you change carriers and as more and more inter/intra-company ports are setup, your routing# will be given to someone else, and will most likely never be a match to your dialable# again.
Your phone# only goes as far as the company who owns it.
Just my 0.02. Jiggs
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