Contradicting commitments made in a settlement, Sprint has ordered Liberty Wireless to stop activating Sprint-branded devices on their MVNO network. Liberty has become attractive for many, now offering a $50/month unlimited, no-contract voice-and-data plan. The plan is paired with a free refurbished Motorola Q.
Today Sprint ordered Liberty Wireless to discontinue activating Sprint devices on any Liberty plan. Paul Greene, CEO of Liberty, confirmed to PhoneNews.com that Sprint ordered them to halt the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) initiative. Mr. Greene stated that the initiative had been in-place for over two years, and that Sprint did not have issue with it until Liberty began actively promoting the initiative online.
As part of a settlement in 2007, Sprint committed to allowing customers out-of-contract to take their devices with them to other CDMA carriers. Sprint also agreed to accept foreign CDMA devices from other carriers, but has failed to do so.
It is not completely clear if Sprint’s shutdown of Liberty’s BYOD program is a violation of the 2007 settlement. Sprint owns the network behind Liberty Wireless, and can impose restrictions on what plans Sprint devices can be used on.
That leaves Boost Mobile UNLTD, which is returning to CDMA sales, as the only method of using a Sprint CDMA phone on prepaid service.
Page Plus activates Sprint devices too but it’s hard to make them work correctly…
The problem with Page Plus is that they are a Verizon MVNO. Sprint and Verizon have failed/refuse to establish a formal device-sharing protocol. As such, you have to re-configure each and every internal setting, which most phones don’t even allow you to do.
As such, Sprint devices on non-Sprint MVNOs are typically limited to voice and (sometimes, if you’re willing to waste more time than it’s worth), 1xRTT (no EV-DO) data.
Yeah, I’m with you man, it sucks. The government should require the use of a standardized SIM card (or compatible RUIMM card) on every device sold in the USA.
WiMAX uses MEIDs quite well and remains technically-open. The carriers are mostly pointing to 4G as the era of open devices… and (the CDMA carriers) have yet to make good on their commitments and promises to open up 3G. I doubt they ever will.
Too bad nobody uses Wimax though.
I guess technically ther eis that HTC Wimax device for the Russian carrier. Would Sprint activate it if someone bought one?
Nobody? At present more people use WiMAX than LTE. Just sayin’…
More people might use Wimax than LTE, but there ar ejust as many LTE phones for sale in the USA as Wimax phones…
Plenty more people have commited to LTE than Wimax too, both worldwide and in the USA.
As to HTC’s Russian WiMAX phone, the problem there is a band-type issue (90% sure on that one).
Clearwire does have the Samsung Mondi though, which comes with SIP VoIP capability.
So are there any other carriers in the world using Wimax that is compatible with Sprint’s? I guess it does no good to to consider yourself “open” and allowing other devices if you are the only carrier in the world who uses that technology/band/whatever…
It’s not a matter of two types of WiMAX. Even South Korea’s WiBro is being phased out for Wave 1 WiMAX compatibility.
It’s a matter of regional radio frequency availability. No different from Europe using GSM 900/1800 MHz while North America uses 850/1900 MHz. As WiMAX becomes cheaper, you’ll see multi-band WiMAX devices, just like it took GSM years to evolve the same thing.
Just like how UMTS phones today don’t operate on AT&T and T-Mobile simultaneously… none of this is easy to add, but people seem to like beating WiMAX up, despite it solving these issues at a faster pace than 3GSM/LTE.
Wimax isn’t solving my issue in any way. Not only is it not available within about 500 miles of me (or more) but there isn’t a single phone for sale that uses the technology anyway.
The point of WiMAX is to let you chose your own voice provider. Want a WiMAX phone right now? Go buy a Samsung Mondi and use Skype.
It is unlikely Sprint will use WiMAX for voice calls, instead deferring that to their CDMA and iDEN networks. Sprint 4G phones will use WiMAX for voice only if you install an SIP client.
And, that’s the point of WiMAX. To augment 3G slowly over the next decade. WiMAX isn’t in my area either, that doesn’t mean it isn’t the future. I’m quite bullish on WiMAX and I doubt LTE will act in a different manner when it comes to voice and data coverage.
If you want Sprint to have open devices in the 3G era, 4G won’t solve your problem. You’ll need to find a class action attorney willing to enforce Sprint’s 2007 settlement.
I was bullish on Wimax until everyone else committed to LTE. Just like GSM gets way more and better devices than CDMA, LTE will do the same to Wimax. And it will be a whole lot worse, because at least there are some rather large CDMA carriers (Verizon is the largest carrier in the nation). But for Wimax, they are few and far between.
WiMAX has always really had a one carrier per nation strategy. With cheap add-on costs to Wi-Fi radios, and Google’s positioning to offer free 384k coverage off of it… it will likely become a premium to Wi-Fi. It’s not a guarantee, but if Intel and Motorola want it to be a success… they’ll make the royalty pricing too good to pass up.
I don’t think it has a 1 carrier per nation strategy at all. When Verizon and AT&T were considering Wimax, there was no 1 carrier per nation strategy back then. There just hasn’t been more than 1 carrier per nation to adopt Wimax- and most nations don’t even have the 1.
Wimax is Betamax to LTE’s VHS. Or HD-DVD to LTE’s Blue Ray.
Even Clearwire isn’t that bullish on Wimax anymore- talking in public comments about how easy it would be for them to switch to LTE…
Clearwire has to make such statements as they are a publicly-traded company. And, it’s true that they could switch to LTE… Clearwire doesn’t have as much at stake as Google and Intel do.
WiMAX had a one carrier strategy by design of technology. LTE is drafted by the cellular industry, where as WiMAX is more from the Wi-FI sector. How many Wi-Fi hotspots do you need? Just one, and with free access from Google, combined with low-cost, low-royalty hardware, one provider is all you need.
I’m not saying LTE will win or WiMAX will win, but to compare it to HD DVD vs Blu-Ray isn’t correct. They are different technologies that, because they are 4G, are constantly compared. One only needs to look at how Clearwire operates versus a traditional wireless provider to see that.
They have to be compared. Sprint is a mobile phone carrier, and every other carrier that they are competing against has chosen to go with LTE. So while Clearwire may not operate like a traditional wireless provider (yet) you can bet Sprint and probably clearwire will too once they actually finish rolling the network out nationwide and get a phone or 2 or 30 that actually work on their network.
Google may very well change the way business is done in the wireless industry. Only a fool would bet against Google these days. but if Google does change the game, it certainly won’t be because of Wimax. Had Clearwire went with LTE Google would right now be ready to offer free LTE service. They only chose Wimax because they saw an easy opportunity to get into it and it was ready to go. LTE was not (and still isn’t?) ready to go at that time.
Still though- with the vast majority of the world, even the vast majority of the USA choosing LTE over Wimax, and even Clearwire- the only Wimax provider on this continent saying in public that they could change to LTE on a moment’s notice, I just don’t see Wimax ever taking off. CDMA barely took off and it had much greater support than Wimax.
So how does Sprint get away with ignoring the 2007 settlement requiring it to accept “foreign” CDMA phones?
Time to complain to the FCC and state consumer affairs agencies . Until ,Hesse wakes up , it looks like a lot of inactive older Sprint phones will continue going to the landfill .
Larry, it’s pretty simple. The class action attorneys that sued Sprint, got their multi-million dollar payment.
They have little-to-no motivation to go back and make Sprint enforce terms of their settlement.
What will need to happen, is either Sprint will have to enforce it of their own volition, or (more likely)… someone will have to file a new class-action suit demanding Sprint enforce the settlement of the old lawsuit.
This is a disgrace!
I say let us do exactly that, it would be a class action lawsuit, with the potential of a multi million SPRINT customer base behind it.
At this time, given the state of the economy, the courts are most likely inclined to take the consumer’s side.
Asking the for FCC’s assistance can not hurt either.
I even considered purchasing a VZW ERIS and flashing it over to SPRINT, to use my none “Everything Plan” i.e. my Fair &Flexible 700 plan,they said, my “Ideas were too big, I need to think smaller, you want a Jaguar in a CIVICâ€!
The store technicians attempted to talk me out of the process,saying it would be too complex with no gurantee of success, “no can do”!
I understand that SPRINT Music*…..etc might not be compatible, but what about rest, i.e. Cell & Data (RTT no EVDO)!
Thank You
Thank You
Problem is, such a class action would take years to be finalized.
By that time, you’ll be on 4G and won’t care about CDMA open-ness.
We predicted this back when the first wave of lawsuits happened years ago… so we don’t have a lot of motivation to pursue a fruitless class action.
….and they are milking that “Cash Cow” till the last drop!
So the next step/lawsuit has to be be premptive of sorts, inclusive of universal carrier portability, CDMA/GSM within each of the systems, giving the FCC some teeth.
Thank You
If you want action taken against Sprint to force them to honor their own agreement and allow 3rd party devices, read here:
https://phone.news/forums/topic/1817-want-better-phones-please-read/
Those people would likely help get the ball rolling.
@ SaltyDawg
Thought you should be aware of the following:
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Sign the petition (and email Congress and the FCC):
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You still get an “A” for efford!
Thank You
REPOST
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@ SaltyDawg
Thought you should be aware of the following:
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Sign the petition (and email Congress and the FCC):
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We’re sorry – the page or function you tried to access could not be found on our web site. We would appreciate it if you could take a moment to email us at list@freepress.net , including details of how you arrived at this page, so that we can correct the problem.
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You still get an “A†for your efford!
Thank You
@ SaltyDawg
My two previous posts went to moderation, your link to “Sign the petition (and email Congress and the FCC)” is “not found”!
You still get an “A†for your efford!
Thank You
Link fixed. Thanks for the heads up…
Didn’t Verizon make a statement along the lines of any device too? If I’m not mistaken it came about the same time this settlement was offered, don’t think they had a lawsuit just wanted to prevent one
All the carriers offering “open networks” in the Big 4 are spouting propaganda doublespeak. Verizon and Sprint have NO intention of allowing phones on their network now or in the future with a brand name on it other then their very own. Period.
The only reason Tmobile and Att do is that they use a primarily open technology for wireless anyway in gsm.
In foreign countries like India and China where they have cdma, their versions of have ruim cards or cdma sim cards which allow compatibility between gsm and cdma platforms.
Only the US, Canada and a few other countries do they keep it proprietary in order to control profits.
The real hope of all this is ironically another company known for its ironfisted control, Qualcomm, the maker and licensor of almost every cdma phone chip in the world. They are creating a so called “worldmode” hybrid technology gsm/cdma compatible chipset which is believed to be slated to possibly debut in the first Verizon based iPhone after Att’s exclusivity with it ends.
Such a chip creates phones that can be truly used on any network.
However, Sprint and Verizon will continue to have a one way control. The won’t allow other devices onto their network, but they can’t force people from taking their devices and running it on competing networks that are technologically compatible and allow other devices like Cricket, Metro, Page Plus and many others.
The independents and mvnos are where you have the open device freedom. Sprint and Verizon aren’t going to allow it anytime soon so might as well buy their top of the line devices and take them to networks which will allow open devices.
[…] report comes from PhoneNews.com, who note that Liberty offered this program for two years, but were only told to cease once they […]
Change the esn and the a-key of the cdma phone you want and destroy the old phone you copied the info from and voila you have changed carrier. Just a matter of settings then. No fraudulent intent as you are paying your bill. Only a single phone exists with that signature at that point also.
Not as easy as it should be but out of spite its the way to go.
Maybe you should change the page subject title Sprint Shuts Down Liberty Wireless’s Bring Your Own Device Program | PhoneNews.com to something more better for your webpage you create. I enjoyed the the writing still.