Bell Canada phone change

[abraisnic]

Hi there,

I had a question - did a quick glance and didn't see a topic on this - my apologies if it's been answered.

My 8830 from Bell (CDMA) has been water damaged, and they said the cost for a new unit is 699 - which is ridiculous. I'm on a corporate plan - so they insist I go through them, but I wanted to know if I could buy a CDMA phone and transfer the Bell sim card inside the device and still be able to access my corporate network.

Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks in advance!

[yogi]

You could buy another CDMA phone without problem. This way you will trnsfer phone your data and plan. If you just transfer your sim card it won't work because your phone is CDMA. CDMA phone don't need sim card to work. Here in North America your phone will work without the sim card inside. But if you go in Europe or somewhere else without your sim your phone won't work. If your phone was a GSM you will just transfer your sim card to another phone and it will work instantly. But it's not. Feel free to pin me if you want.

[avacomputers]

I have a Sprint 8830 for sale.

[lieman]

I'd check eBay.ca and Kijiji for a used Bell 8830 that you could get instead of buying a brand new one, but make sure it is a Bell world phone of some sort (Tour and Storm included, obviously), because unless I'm mistaken, it's extremely hard, if not impossible to put a phone from another carrier onto a Bell (or Telus) account.
Again, I'm not positive about Bell, but my in-store support team through Telus has assured me many times that it isn't possible to bring a phone from another carrier to a Bell/Telus system - something to do with tracking individual ESNs.

[crakky]

lieman is right. No canadian CDMA carrier will allow you to switch phones as in bringing a Telus phone to Bell and vice-versa. However if you join Rogers or Fido, you can unlock the phone and switch phones just by taking out the sim card. Stick with CDMA though, the speeds wtih Bell and Telus are much faster.