Re:AT&T Will Force Your Data Plan For Your Unlocked Out-of-C...
by lesterbuck on Sunday February 03, 2013 @01:57AM
(#5158931)
You keep saying your got "a service <you> didn't agree to", but, of course, you did agree to it. You didn't understand what you were agreeing to, but you accepted all of AT&T terms and conditions as you signed up for their service. And this is hardly news, as AT&T forced data plans on smart phones on Sept 6, 2009.
They have a humorous justification: to keep their customers from having massive data bills by accident. Yeah, right...
The key to having a WiFi only smartphone on AT&T is stealth. You must keep a dumb phone around to switch to as necessary, and then you can sneak a smartphone on the network that has never been seen by AT&T as a smartphone. For example, you might buy a T-Mobile (only) unlocked smartphone and then put your AT&T SIM card into it. Be sure to disable all the data network interfaces first thing, as they may give you away. You can buy a dumb phone to AT&T to verify for $15 on sales from GoPhone, or any number of other prepaid phones.
I would be interested to know if now, ab initio, AT&T is able to detect that a specific IMEI number is a smartphone. I think the worldwide range of IMEI numbers is too vast for that to work, and thank goodness T-Mobile didn't merge with AT&T.
http://gizmodo.com/5342749/att-forcing-data-plans-with-all-s...
They have a humorous justification: to keep their customers from having massive data bills by accident. Yeah, right...
The key to having a WiFi only smartphone on AT&T is stealth. You must keep a dumb phone around to switch to as necessary, and then you can sneak a smartphone on the network that has never been seen by AT&T as a smartphone. For example, you might buy a T-Mobile (only) unlocked smartphone and then put your AT&T SIM card into it. Be sure to disable all the data network interfaces first thing, as they may give you away. You can buy a dumb phone to AT&T to verify for $15 on sales from GoPhone, or any number of other prepaid phones.
I would be interested to know if now, ab initio, AT&T is able to detect that a specific IMEI number is a smartphone. I think the worldwide range of IMEI numbers is too vast for that to work, and thank goodness T-Mobile didn't merge with AT&T.