Tired of your CDMA network and looking for an affordable regional carrier delivering unlimited calling for under $40/month with unlimited text for only $3 more? Well MetroPCS is setting the pace for major carriers by announcing they will activate and reprogram any CDMA phone on their network. The announcement poses the biggest threat to US CDMA carriers, Sprint and Verizon, who both have a much larger phone catalog which would interest those looking at MetroPCS for the price, but turned away by the limited phone selection. Late last year both Sprint and Verizon made announcements that they would reprogram unlocked CDMA phones for their network, but after initial reports of CSR training the news quickly died off.
While we are not subscribers of MetroPCS the move could spark Sprint and Verizon to offer their own services for activating and reprogramming unlocked CDMA phones. Although being able to take your Sprint Instinct over to Verizon Wireless and activate it sounds great for the consumer, the business model of the Wireless Industry relies on the 2 year agreements and the exclusive contracts build customer loyalty, whether that loyalty is due to a $200 cancellation fee or an exclusive phone is part of their bottom line.
MetroPCS Communications, Inc., (formerly General Wireless, Inc.) was launched in 2002 and is a provider of CDMA wireless communications services in the greater Miami, Tampa, Sarasota, Fort Myers, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Daytona, Dallas, Detroit, Orlando, and Sacramento metropolitan areas. It is the seventh largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States. As of the ending of first quarter of 2008, MetroPCS serves a total of over 4.4 million subscribers. – Wikepedia.org
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It seems that the above article is COMPLETELY FALSE. I spoke with MetroPCS Customer support today and they say they CANNOT activate and reprogram CDMA phones from other networks. Either yor website is wrong (which makes it a useless source of information) or you recieved wrong information – which still makes it useless to go to your website for information. I suppose Netziens should be warned about such fake and false news stories.
The above information is from a MetroPCS press release from last year. Both Sprint and Verizon also announced that they would allow reprogramming of CDMA devices to “open their networks” around the same time. At this point neither MetroPCS, Sprint nor Verizon is actually doing so, but that does not mean they will not do so in the future (as they promised, not I).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25416152/
“MetroPCS Communications Inc. has become the largest U.S. wireless carrier to say it will let customers bring cell phones from other carriers, which it will then reprogram for use on its own network.
This week’s announcement by the Dallas-based regional carrier is one of a series of moves in the industry that amount to a gradual opening of the U.S. wireless market, giving consumers more choice over what phones to use on what networks.”