TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges

Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges

Mr Joseph Singer (joeofseattle@yahoo.com)
Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:12:37 PDT

Mark Crispin <mrc@cac.washington.edu> Sat, 19 Aug 2006 19:50:09 -0700
wrote:

> TracFones are GSM, TDMA, or CDMA depending upon the region. Even if
> the GSM phones are GSM 850/1900, that's still useful elsewhere in the
> Americas once the phone is unlocked (note that TracFone itself is a
> subsidiary of America Movil, a Latin America mobile phone company).

TracFones whether GSM, CDMA or IS-136 "TDMA" all have special unique
firmware in the handset that debits the account rather than as in
traditional prepaid where all the account debiting is done in the
operator's billing system. This is why some older TracFones do not
debit for incoming text messages while the newer models do. The only
way you can use handsets that were for Net10 or TracFone outside of
their systems is if you have them reflashed with generic non-Net10 or
TracFone specific firmware. Even though TracFone has GSM in many
places you cannot take a regular SIM and insert it into a TracFone
even if the SIM "subsidy" lock is defeated. In other groups it has
been discussed and some think that you cannot even use a Net10 or
TracFone handset interchangeably even though they both use the same
handset-based debiting/charging system.

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