On 2008-04-08, Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:
> Dennis Ferguson <dcferguson@pacbell.net> wrote in
> news:slrnfvklga.4g.dcferguson@akit-ferguson.com:
>
>> put the US company SIM in the phone
>
> Is only the number stored on this card??
>
> I don't think so.....but I could be wrong. I'm a CDMA customer, hard
> coded...

I'm not even sure the phone number is on there. There's the
subscriber identity serial number and the authentication keys
to go with it, the home network and network name to display
on the phone, stuff about how to send SMS messages and get voice
mail and things like that, but that's about all the standard stuff
there is on the SIM. The network operator can add Value Added
Service stuff to the SIM, but this only does anything if there
is software on the phone which knows what to do with it and an
unbranded phone won't have that. I guess the operator could
use this to restrict their service, or parts of their service,
to handsets they supply, but in my experience neither of the
big US GSM operators does that. The features on standard overseas
phones work pretty much as well as the equipment the operators sell,
and the equipment the operators sell is usually only mildly
brain-deadened, if at all, compared to the unbranded stuff.

In any case, there's not enough stuff on the SIM card that an unbranded
phone takes notice of for the operator to be able to effect much of
anything at all. The GSM operators will of course do what they can
with their network to make you want to buy more stuff, but they can't
(or don't) generally do it by hobbling the equipment.

Dennis Ferguson