Unbranded CDMA phones for USA?

BobcatRidge

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Can anyone think of a reason why Nokia or HTC can't make some phones that are compatible with Verizon or any other carrier that refuses to offer some new WP7 handsets? Microsoft could sell them through their store. End users can go month-to-month with their carrier. If enough people decided to go this route, it would weaken the carriers grip on the US market.

What do you guys think?
 
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theefman

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Those phones require activation to work on CDMA networks like Sprint and Verizon and that would probably never happen. As for Tmo, band incompatibility prevents that but with their refarming plans maybe wont be an issue in the near future. Beauty of GSM, bring your own phone and no one can tell you otherwise.
 

jfa1

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Any company like Nokia can make phones for Verison or Sprint or ATT or Mo or whoever. Theyw ont unless the carrier is willing to pony up the support and make a financial commitment. If they dont or wont its a failure to launch. So you cant blame Nokia or HTC or any OEM for the failure of any device to be on a specific carrier Blame the carrier!!!
 

palandri

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Won't happen. U.S. carriers want you locked into a contract with their phone.

Although 80% on the world uses GSM, in Asia where a few carriers use CDMA, they have a CDMA SIM type card so you can switch carriers. You'll never see those in the U.S.

I read a lot of articles about Nokia getting back into U.S. marketplace. One of the conditions I kept reading about was Nokia had to stop selling unlocked, unbranded, pentaband (works on AT&T, T-Mobile and Europe GSM) phones in the U.S. Nokia did have a few stores in U.S. We had one in Chicago, but they have all been closed.
 

anodynamic

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Any company like Nokia can make phones for Verison or Sprint or ATT or Mo or whoever. Theyw ont unless the carrier is willing to pony up the support and make a financial commitment.

I get the impression it's the other way around. The carriers rule the US phone market, and the manufactures have to play along if they want any share of that market. Competing by offering exclusive handsets is a good system from their perspective, since that isn't what they actually make money from, and without it they would have to compete with the service fees only.
 

kylej1050

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You won't likely see an unbranded CDMA phone here. I'm not sure about verizon but sprint doesn't care what the phone is, if it didn't have a sprint logo on it when it came out of the factory, they won't activate.

Now someone like cricket might, since they will even re-flash another carrier's phone for you to use on their system.
 

Polychrome

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Won't happen. U.S. carriers want you locked into a contract with their phone.

Although 80% on the world uses GSM, in Asia where a few carriers use CDMA, they have a CDMA SIM type card so you can switch carriers. You'll never see those in the U.S.

4G Verizon phones use a sim that handles provisioning for CDMA, GSM (for roaming), and LTE, however I'm not completely sure whether or not manufactureres might attempt to make an "unlocked" phone for these. It's technically possible.

The problem with the CDMA carriers is compatibility. There's nothing on CDMA phones that is "locked", however the carriers won't necessarily allow a device to be used on their network if they aren't completely, absolutely sure that the device will work properly. There are some devices out there that can be activated on any CDMA carrier without a fuss, but they're mostly non-voice devices like unbranded data cards and the like.
 

speedtouch

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I get the impression it's the other way around. The carriers rule the US phone market, and the manufactures have to play along if they want any share of that market. Competing by offering exclusive handsets is a good system from their perspective, since that isn't what they actually make money from, and without it they would have to compete with the service fees only.

You would be 100% correct.
 

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