Sprint locked phones

I am a Sprint dealer.  The way I understand this is a locked phone can only be used as a prepaid card phone, where as an unlocked phone is used on a plan where a customer is billed monthly.  There is software out there that can unlock certain phones, but it is only for the following providers.  Any of sim card based phone providers i.e. Nextel (iden), Cingular (GSM) and Tmobile (GSM).  This is because it is over the air provisioning.  Any of the other providers i.e. Verizon (CDMA), Sprint (CDMA), and ALLTEL (CDMA) cannot be unlocked because you must manually program the phone.  As far as using phones on different providers networks than they were originally assigned for.  It is nearly impossible.  There are 4 different type of networks out there, TDMA (which is not being maintained and slowly being phased out), GSM, IDEN, and CDMA.  Once a phone is released from a manufacturer the ESN is tagged with the provider it has been sold to and will not work for another provider.  For example Sprint and Verizon both have a Treo 650 but Verizons Treo will not be able to be activated in Sprint's system because its ESN has been tagged as a Verizon phone even though they both used the same type of network. 

I believe what the lawsuit is, is that Sprint never specified whether the phones were locked or not BEFORE selling them the phone and service... granted, it's common sense... so this lawsuit is like the guy who sued mcdonalds for 'making' him fat... I think we need to get rid of the lawyers who *actually* take on these cases... Then again, the lawsuit is in California and maybe the laws are different there... here in Texas, most of us have sense enough to know our sprint phone won't work with verizon and the playstation2 won't play xbox games.

Anyway... a locked phone is a phone that can only be used with that particular network... an unlocked phone (which you can usually buy over the internet via auction sites and such) is a phone that, for example, you can put a sim card from any network in (usually) and it should work... some networks can 'unlock' their phones but generally can only be used with maybe one or two other networks if they do that...

Boyfriend has an unlocked Cingular phone with T-mobile... it's kind of odd... and he can't seem to send or receive picture or video messages on it (although I'm not sure if he tried with any cingular customers) but other than that, it works fine.... I think the little cingular orange icon guy is fighting with the t mobile sim card and took away picture and video messaging in spite of it all...

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Blonde is a state of mind... or lack thereof...