Cellular Phone Programming Guides?

cainpitt asks: "I work for a small telecommunications company that activates the three major types of cellphones, CDMA, TDMA and GSM as a reseller for the major carriers. We activate old phones and we sometimes need to check them for compatibility and programming instructions. We've been using an application named Cellurom from Bishop and Associates for a few years now. This application had information from almost every manufacturer and every phone sold in the U.S. However, we just found out they will no longer be updating Cellurom with new phones. Does the Slashdot community know of subscription-based software that can provide programming and operating instructions for cell phones?"

Comments

BernieS@2600.com

[Anonymous Coward]

could probably tell you.

Or try Kevin Mitnick. :)

Re:BernieS@2600.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Ringtones Real Tones Voice Ringers Sound Ringers Mobile Phone Java Games Mobile Wallpaper

Activation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from Europe, which is maybe the reason I don't really understand your post.. what do you mean by "activation"? Here in Europe in the GSM network you just need to put the SIM-Card your operator gave you to any GSM mobile phone, and it works instantly, no need for any phone-specific activation.

Re:Activation?

[slakdrgn]

In the USA things are a bit different. Some carriers (i.e. ones that use GSM) utilize SIM Cards that will work with just about any phone. However, the phone may be locked to that network (say, BIGCELLPROVIDER1 and you have a SIM from BIGCELLPROVIDER2). I forgot what thats called. CDMA carriers typically do not use a SIM Card, instead you register the phone with the carrier, similiar to TDMA. The phone is usually locked to a specific carrier also. They do this to limit people buying a cool phone from PROVIDER1 and moving to PROVIDER2 since they typically sell the phones at a loss and make money off the subscriptions.

Re:Activation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster you're replying to doesn't fully understand the process in Europe, but AFAIK we're quite similar to yourselves in the US.

Cellular providers here will usually provide a phone which has been "locked" to their network. This prevents you from using the phone with other provider's networks unless you download the unlocking tool from the Internet or pay the chap at your local market a fiver to do it for you. This phone lock mechanism reads the provider ID from the SIM card and if they don't match, then it will not work. SIM-free (i.e. straight from the Nokia or whatever factory) will normally work with any provider's SIM cards.

I personally am with a company called "3" here in the UK - the provide 3G video calling services and are the only cellular carrier who actually have a fair pricing tarriff which is easy to understand. I've been with Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone in the last 7 years and they have all been pretty shit.

Re:Activation?

[rec9140]

In the US you can not just purchase any old phone and use it on any network with out a lot of hoops.

This is done to lock you into the carrier. Also in the US many carriers have Early Termination Fees (ETF) so if you sign up and cancel, normally before 2 years, its normally a $175 charge. This is especially true if your on promotional plans and getting 50 phones for $0.01. They want you to pay air time charges for all those free phones.

GSM Based Networks:

Cingular/ATT, Tmobile

Since they use GSM they have SIM cards thus you can *normally* can get a phone from say EBay that has previously been used on the same network and swap SIM cards no problem. This can be locked by the carrier if they choose, but most allow SIM swaps on phones which have been used on their network.

Phones from other networks will REQUIRE an unlock code or software. Most of the times a quick call to the carrier and they will provide the code over the phone or email.

CDMA:

CDMA does not use SIMS, there is a similar R-UIDM card available, but the one phone in the US market that has it the carrier specifically locked its use out.

Alltel:

Phones not locked, but BEWARE: Alltel is absolutely anal about this! NO ANALOG AMPS or NON GPS phones will be activated on their network, period. So if you want to keep your ancient phone around as a back up and use while you get a replacement think again. You must call to do an ESN change, no web changes. NO GPS, NO SWAP/ACTIVATE, AMPS only, NO!

Verizon:

Phones are not locked, except old PrimeCO units that may be floating around, probably all gone now unless your like me and don't change phones every other day.

Online ESN swap for FREE, $15 charge via phone. If its not a phone they have used on their network you may have to call and tell them its a similar phone to get it to do the PRL update.

NOTE: If your a Bluetooth fanatic, DO NOT USE VERIZON! They will disable most of the usable functions of Bluetooth as they did on the V710. They also will disable any thing that would allow you to put ring tones on the phone or take pictures off the phone via PC or avoid the charge to do so. You need to get a NON VERIZON version of any BT phone to use any thing other than headset mode.

SprintPCS:

Phones LOCKED REQUIRE the Master Subsidy Lock (MSL) code to reprogram to another network. Hit or miss on getting this code from them. Also ESN can be locked to SprintPCS. Many carriers especially Verizon will NOT activate former SprintPCS phones and they can tell by the ESN.

MetroPCS

Phones locked will require an unlock code to mirgrate to another carrier.

iDEN-TDMA

Nextel/Boost:

Nextel/Boost does use SIM's but Nextel likes to tie the SIM to the phone so you have to get a new SIM on every new phone.

You can swap a Boost SIM into a Nextel phone with out issue, you need to UNLOCK Boost phones to use a Nextel SIM in them.

ALL NEW Boost phones are "double locked" with a code that has not been cracked, yet. This is NOT the Subsidy Lock that can be defeated via certain software on Nextel/Boost.

Re: Your .sig: It's Great! (NT)

[OneDeeTenTee]

fnord

tdma?

[XO]

Umm.. who still uses TDMA? Cingular/AT&T hasn't been activiating TDMA for like a year now??

CDMA autoprograms, GSM is programmed via the card, and TDMA basically doesn't exist anymore.

So, what's the issue?

Re:tdma?

[cainpitt]

Believe it or not, AT&T/Cingular still have a lot of resellers who still activate TDMA such as Airvoice and we even have a few 100K subscibers. This is prepaid but it sells very well and the profit made from it is pretty amazing. THe most expensive cards are sometimes like $.30 a minute

Re:tdma?

[XO]

frightening.

TDMA doesn't support E911 does it? How does that work?

Re:tdma?

[cainpitt]

CDMA does not always program over the air. I've sat with people on the line for like a half hour trying to program their Verizon phones and it's not always pretty.

Re:tdma?

[dqbiggerfam]

Cellular One still offers TDMA service, although it is being phased out to GSM.

Re:tdma?

[jcjewell]

I could be wrong, but this is my impression about what is happening with TDMA, at least with AT&T/Cingular:

They are transitioning to GSM nationwide here in the U.S. but they have a pretty hefty investment in their cell towers in TDMA equipment. So are they just throwing it out the window? Nope. They are reselling TMDA to at least one company, who is offering pre-paid cell service for bargain prices. The company that I know about is Beyond Wireless.

It works like this. You get yourself a TDMA phone, contact Beyond Wireless, they walk you through programming it, and give you 35 minutes free. Then at any time, you can log onto their website with a credit card and get a PIN code for just about any increment of minutes ($5, $10, $20, etc. up to $100). The bigger the increment you buy, the cheaper it is per minute, for 14.2 cents a minute down to 10 cents a minute.

The great thing about it is that you get AT&T's big footprint, albeit their old TDMA footprint, and your minutes never expire, as long as you use at least one minute every two months--pretty easy to do.

Another great thing is that incoming text messages are free. So in effect, it's a free text pager, as long as you use that one minute every two months. So, for 14.2 cents every two months, you can keep a pager going :)

Bad news-- I am suspecting that the TDMA coverage will continue to get worse and worse, as equipment fails, it will not be replaced. That's just my suspicions, based on what I've seen.

For now, it's worked great for me. I bought a phone for about $40, and haven't used more than $5 in minutes over the course of several months.

Re:tdma?

[Technician]

The great thing about it is that you get AT&T's big footprint, albeit their old TDMA footprint, and your minutes never expire, as long as you use at least one minute every two months--pretty easy to do.


Watch out for a gotcha. Read the fine print. Many of the pre-paid plans expire at 24 months regardless of usage. It changes the price of the paging service if you bought a $100 pre-pay.

With a $10 pre pay, it's closer to 84 + 14.2 cents per 2 months. It's even higher if you pre-paid for more minutes.

Still for 50 cents/month, it's cheap paging.

Re:tdma?

[jcjewell]

Watch out for a gotcha. Read the fine print. Many of the pre-paid plans expire at 24 months regardless of usage. It changes the price of the paging service if you bought a $100 pre-pay.

I don't see any such fine print with Beyond Wireless. They very clearly say, and my experience so far seems to support "Your Minutes NEVER EXPIRE" (their gratuitous exclamation points omitted).

If you can point me at something different, I'd appreciate knowing the catch. But as I said, so far it seems to be a great deal, and I've paid next to nothing to have a cell phone since I've found them.

Having said that, there are a couple of small things that are annoying to me. They first told me I could port my old cell number, then they said they couldn't, that they'd have to give me a new number, and after all was said and done, what I had to accept was a phone number that is no where near where I live (I live in Washington NOT D.C. and my cell number is a Texas number). But for outgoing calls, it doesn't matter. All minutes are created equal.

Re:tdma?

[kannibal_klown]

I don't see any such fine print with Beyond Wireless. They very clearly say, and my experience so far seems to support "Your Minutes NEVER EXPIRE" (their gratuitous exclamation points omitted).

Well, one thing is, they'll never expire so long as you keep buying minutes. So, after 3 or 4 months if you haven't "recharged" your minutes they'll usually terminate your service.

However, if you pay the bare minimum every 2 or 3 months, your minutes just keep accumulating. At one point I had like $220 worth of minutes accumulated on my old prepaid service, but their coverage sucked where I worked so I cancelled it.

Damn, I had a lot of minutes on there...

Re:tdma?

[jcjewell]

Well, one thing is, they'll never expire so long as you keep buying minutes. So, after 3 or 4 months if you haven't "recharged" your minutes they'll usually terminate your service.

Well, I've not seen anything that requires me to buy more minutes on a regular basis either, and in fact, I even ran the perfect case scenario past a sales rep, which was, "So, if my father, for example, who doesn't like the idea of spending money on something he would rarely use, such as a cell phone, were to get a cheap TDMA phone on eBay for say $40, and then just use the free 35 minutes you give him, and only use it in case he really needs it, and just made a 1 minute call every 2 months, that would be ok? Then when those 35 minutes are almost gone, from making a one minute call every 2 months for almost 6 years, then he could recharge for $5, right?" and the rep said, "Sure, you could do that, no problem." That's when I signed up, and I've not had a problem since. It's been almost 3 months. We'll see if you're right.

Re:tdma?

[alw53]

I had a GSM phone with AT&T and the AT&T/Cingular store wouldn't let me activate it for use with Cingular!! They were going to require me to buy another phone or indenture myself for another two years. I've had this phone for about 4 years. Three reps told me it was impossible to move from AT&T GSM to Cingular; as I don't like being lied to I cancelled my AT&T account and opened with Alltel.

Re:tdma?

[cainpitt]

Wise move. I can't believe this is even legal in this country. Especially since they merged.

The Problem

[cainpitt]

The problem is that we activate TDMA and GSM phones but when you activate an older non GSM phone, you need to program a system ID which is like a location code and the new phone number by entering some codes into the keypad. This is different for all phones so we need a program that has a database of all existing phones and their programming instructions. I tried Google and amazingly I could bot find anything.

Activation?-After it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know all that wouldn't be so bad, if you didn't have to jump through hoops AFTER your contract expired.*

*I find it funny that geeks brag about cracking anything content providers come up with, but apparently the cell-phone market is too tuff for them.

Re:Activation?-After it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny that geeks brag about cracking anything content providers come up with, but apparently the cell-phone market is too tuff for them.

I find it rather strange. After all, all the communication is via radio waves, so it should be trivial to sniff the traffic.

Sjeez - I'm glad I live in Europe ..

[cheros]

I mean, how is this providing a consistent cell phone service across the US? It's IMHO a consumers' nightmare because instead of open competition you simple have multiple lock-ins to choose from.

That's not real choice IMHO, but then again I don't live there. Maybe there's some hidden benefit that I don't see?

= Ch =

Re:Sjeez - I'm glad I live in Europe ..

[rec9140]

One thing that GSM did do right is the idea behind SIM cards. CDMA has the like R-UDIM card, but like I said the one phone I know of has it disabled, by CARRIER REQUEST.

I do agree that this "lock in" needs to die. There should just be a store with phones pick the one you like that matches your network CDMA, 1900 & 800, or what ever.

Unfortunately its been that way since things started nearly 20 years ago. The first phones put into my cars all were practically cheap or free with a free or low cost installation, but you were committed for 2 years or $175. Nothings really changed other than now its pocket sized phones v. installed car phones.

The idea is that $xx.xx *24 for the 2 years will cover the cost of the phone and be quite profitable in the long run.

New phone comes out and they get you for another 2 years. I don't buy phones from the carrier I get them off EBay. I have not been under contract for 3 years and am not about to change it. Not that I am likely to leave my carrier any way. The present choices from my carrier are too feature overloaded and 99% are flip style which I can not stand. I want to smack the Motorola egnineer who came up with those stupid StarTAC's!

You should walk into Cellular World Super Center and pick your phone out, swap what ever kind of chip SIM/R-UDIM, and out the door you go.

All those who are slaves to "cool" phones could change to their hears content.

Coporate greed gets in the way of this though.

Me too.

[Stavr0]

I uhhhh, also "work for a small telecommunications company" (yeah, that'll do) and also require software to help me ermmm, "activate" cell phones. (they'll buy that).

So if you could somehow put that CD in a plain brown envelope and I'll meet you at the coffee shop downstairs, y'know coz they have good coffee there....