activating ESN's on CDMA networks

[terryw35]

I was told that "On a CDMA system all ESNs have to be activated on the carriers network. Simply programming the old information to the new phone won't make it work."

Is there a way to do this?

[TelcomJunkie]

Originally Posted by terryw35

I was told that "On a CDMA system all ESNs have to be activated on the carriers network. Simply programming the old information to the new phone won't make it work."

Is there a way to do this?

Quoting myself here

To activate an ESN on a CDMA system you need to contact the carrier. Most choose to only activate phones originally sold by them and assumed to have the correct user interface still installed on that phone. Good luck getting a CDMA phone from one carrier activated on a different one.

[Sfreeman6]

You can do it, but the problem is it will take time. Each phone manufacturer , LG, Nokia, etc has certain sequence of the electronic Serial Numbers (ESN) for each carrier, like LG will have esn sequence starting 204-zxxxxxxx and that will be for verizon only, the same model phone but going to alltell might be like 127-xxxxxxxx. Same exact phone, but because Verizon only has the 207 series in its device, database, it will not let you activate the other esn. To get by that the rep has to confirm thr information of your device, (make sure the model, and e 911 compliance) and after they confirm its good, they can send a requst to have that esn added to the database, so it can be activated in the system. should take 3 to 4 days,, but should be able to do it. Providing the rep knows how to do this simple process..