Originally Posted by
KenV54 I agree about the incompetent and even nasty phone reps at AT&T. Not so easy to be nasty to customers face to face at the AT&T Store.
But here is the definitive answer, at least for me. Yesterday I called AT&T and asked them to change my IMEI number--the rep refused. I gave her a bad rating on the feedback text message I got from AT&T.
Today I went to my local AT&T Store, corporate, and asked if they would change the IMEI number on my Passport SIM registration (on their computers, not my actual SIM) from what was my old Amazon-bought unlocked OG Passport IMEI to my new SE Passport IMEI. She did, and it did nothing. My Mobile Network settings still showed UTMS or something like that, as did their computer--I saw it myself. It did not say LTE on either.
Then I asked her to change the IMEI number registered with them from my SE Passport IMEI to my wife's Z10 IMEI--the Z10 had been bought originally from AT&T. Once she did that, the AT&T computer now showed LTE, as did the Mobile network settings on my SE Passport. And I had LTE on my Passport once again, and I still have it.
Apparently, the IMEI number tells AT&T whether the phone is an AT&T phone--the two Passports are not, but the Z10 is, and that determines whether you can get LTE on their end and then on the phone itself. Since it is physically possible (with a size adaptor) and perfectly legal to move a SIM card from one phone to another, so long as the phone number stays the same, AT&T doesn't really care what the IMEI number is. Or maybe they do, so that people are encouraged to buy phones from AT&T and have an IMEI number that identifies it as such and permits LTE to be used, but they aren't sticklers for it.
Fact is, if you have an AT&T Z10 or AT&T Passport IMEI number available to you, you can just ask AT&T on the phone or at the AT&T Store, depending upon the rep, I suppose, to associate that IMEI number with your SIM card.
Sorry to be so repetitious, but I wanted to avoid confusion or questions about what I did, what works, or how to do it. I'm sure there will still be some of each :-)