ATT Wireless (US) is expelling devices including the Pro 1 from its network

[theory 15]

Well, it seems to be official now.

ATT is scanning its network and disabling SIMs when the IMEI currently in use doesn't match the IMEI registered to the SIM.

They did it to me again  about 22:30 eastern last night...  just after their offices closed for the night...  This AM I called them and after a long run around, and proving to them that my phone DID work in VoLTE, HD Voice and that it worked with UTMS/3G disabled they... didn't care.  They re-enabled my SIM BUT...

Teir II support told me that my SIM would be AUTOMATICALLY disabled again, (and again) because their system can not identify the phone by IMEI and if it isn't on the whitelist, it will be disabled.

They also told me this will be happening across their network in different areas until the February 2022 3G shutoff...

Pretty shitty behavior if you ask me...

So, since I will apparently be switching carriers to Verizon (US), is there anything I should know about moving my Pro 1 and activating it on Verizon  before I do so?

Thanks...

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[Hook 3,043]

How very odd.  Is this contract AT&T or Pay as you go?  I used AT&T pay as you go (under various names going back to Cingular Wireless) and they never cared what phone you wanted to use.  I had mt Pro1 on it for a year with no problems, but I finally switched to T-Mobile because they have a very good low price Pay As You Go plan. 

 

Here's a thread here about Verizon.   The recommended instructions worked fine for me once Lineage fixed a few things.  The trouble is you need a "mule" phone that you can activate woth Volte before you can insert the SIM in the Pro1.  You can't use the Pro1 for initial activation. 

If you have decent coverage, T-Mobile will be easier. 

[Tsunero 215]

I suggest T-Mobile / Telekom, sh*t just works...

[theory 15]

6 hours ago, Hook said:

How very odd.  Is this contract AT&T or Pay as you go?  I used AT&T pay as you go (under various names going back to Cingular Wireless) and they never cared what phone you wanted to use.  I had mt Pro1 on it for a year with no problems, but I finally switched to T-Mobile because they have a very good low price Pay As You Go plan. 

 

Here's a thread here about Verizon.   The recommended instructions worked fine for me once Lineage fixed a few things.  The trouble is you need a "mule" phone that you can activate woth Volte before you can insert the SIM in the Pro1.  You can't use the Pro1 for initial activation. 

If you have decent coverage, T-Mobile will be easier. 

It was a contract back in 2005 when it was Centennial Wireless and my P4300 Wizard. 

But that has long since run out and it has simply been standard post paid service since then.  I've never actually bought a phone on contract from ATT.

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[theory 15]

6 hours ago, Tsunero said:

I suggest T-Mobile / Telekom, sh*t just works...

My wife has T-Mobile...

We travel the country, (by road), and ATT often worked where T-Mobile would not...

I'm hoping that I would get the same results with Verizon.

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[theory 15]

And, at 15:35 eastern, ATT sent me a text and shut off my SIM again.

Last shot...

Gonna drive to a company store in Kalamazoo and see if they can fix it.

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[Hook 3,043]

1 hour ago, theory said:

It was a contract back in 2005 when it was Centennial Wireless and my P4300 Wizard. 

But that has long since run out and it has simply been standard post paid service since then.  I've never actually bought a phone on contract from ATT.

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"Post-Paid" and "Contract" are the same thing to me.  They tend to have more restrictions than Pre-Paid.  I have never done contract or post-paid since I always pay for my phones up front.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Hook

[theory 15]

So... Back from the ATT store...

Learned that there is NOTHING they can do in the store,,,  It is now policy to remove ALL non-ATT branded devices from the ATT network.  They expect to have removed all non-ATT branded devices by February 2022.

Apparently, they no longer want people who use non-standard gear on their network...  Also, people using 'hacked' gear to get around to data cap on hotspot usage  vs the unlimited usage of smartphone data...  This is their way of getting rid of them...

One last shot with tier III support... But they simply are not willing to add the IMEI to their whitelist...

They did confirm what is happening...  The network is scanning active SIMs...  And then pulling the IMEI and associating it with the SIM.  And matching the IMEI against their master 'whitelist'  of approved phones.

Word is, they will begin checking the collected IMEI's against stolen lists next year...

My discussions with Verizion went MUCH better...

More in the next post...

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[peter.s.fidelman 54]

Hi theory, I'm on AT&T and have the same problem as you.  Just got the dreaded deactivation text today.  Super annoying because this was just after I'd confirmed HD Voice was working perfectly.  It's not a problem with the phone's technological capabilities, it seems to be a problem with AT&T's policies.

I contacted fxtec to see if there is anything they can do.  Waiting to hear back. This is a problem many small phonemakers are facing right now. Unihertz phones fixed the problem by registering their IMEIs with AT&T and providing a way for users to change their IMEI to one that works, see https://www.reddit.com/r/unihertz/comments/lyt6xk/unofficial_psa_att_wont_activate_some_unihertz/

Edited August 13, 2021 by peter.s.fidelman

[mv 85]

I was receiving texts saying they wanted me to get a new phone that they would send to me, they went as far as sending it and I refused delivery and that prevented them from activating the replacement and the messages from AT&T have stopped coming to me. Curious though what regions of the US they are hitting first, I am in the Boston area.

[Hook 3,043]

I'm also am curious if they are doing this with pre-pay, which has always tended to be more open to strange and international phones, or if it's just post-pay.

[peter.s.fidelman 54]

Here is the long story of how I got expelled from the AT&T network:

My old phone, before the Pro1, was a Galaxy Note 3.  It was 3G-only.

When I got my Pro1, I swapped the Note's sim card into the Pro1 and carried on as normal.  This worked great.  I did notice that some features, such as HD Voice, did not work.  Probably because this was a very old (2014) SIM card that wasn't provisioned for those features?  Anyway, it didn't affect my enjoyment of the Pro1.

In 2021, I started getting texts from AT&T saying that my "Note3" was 3G only and would soon be unsupported.  They had no idea I did the sim swap trick, and I couldn't persuade them to accept the Pro1's IMEI number because it wasn't recognized in their system.  Their website continued to treat me and my phone as the old Note3.

When I was offered a free upgrade to an AT&T Radiant phone I accepted, figuring I'd activate the Radiant and then do the sim swap trick again, thus putting a shiny new freshly activated 4G sim card in my Pro1.  I did, and it worked great for a day or so.  Then I got the dreaded "We're sorry, but the phone you recently tried to activate won't work" text, and kicked off the network (in the middle of a spiffy HD-Voice phone call no less, which according to AT&T my phone doesn't support 😉 ).

Anyway... Maybe if I hadn't activated the Radiant, my Pro1 would still be working on AT&T.  But it was borrowed time anyway, with the old SIM card, my Pro1 wasn't using HD Voice and would have failed when 3G was deactivated in 2022.

Question for the room, does anyone in here have a USA, AT&T Mobile post-paid plan, with your Pro1 successfully running with all 4G features including HD Voice?  If so, how did you do it?

Edited August 14, 2021 by peter.s.fidelman

[EskeRahn 5,471]

It seems like the best shot at it getting to work is if FxTec can do something similar to what @peter.s.fidelman described UniHertz did with AT&T to get the Pro1(X) whitelisted - I have no idea what it takes to do so (AFAIK it is not as easy to swap the IMEI on th Pro1, so most likely it would be to get existing IMEI-ranges whitelisted), but let us tag @Waxberry and @Erik and see if one of them can perform some magic here 🙂

[peter.s.fidelman 54]

I got a response from Fxtec on my support ticket:

Quote

Dear Peter,

Thanks for the message.

We have noticed the recent changes to AT&T’s compatibility and support for the Pro1 X.
At the moment we are working hard to solve this issue and get your device back up and running shortly.
Thank you for the suggestions and they will definitely be taken on board.
We apologise for any inconvenience this might be causing you.

Feel free to let us know if there's anything else we can help you with.

Kind regards,
F(x)tec Support

Hopefully they do fix it for the Pro1, and not just the upcoming Pro1 X!

[86turbodsl 3]

My son is on ATT in Michigan also, and no amount of cojoling or sim swapping hijinx were able to allow him to to keep his pixels on ATT.  He jumped ship.

I'm on Tmo and the Pro1X is on order.  I'll let you know how it works if it ever ships....  😞

[KingOfTerrible 69]

Anyone have any updates?  Any news from FxTec on getting this fixed for ATT network customers since @peter.s.fidelman quoted message above?

[mv 85]

tldr; might require us to speak to AT&T tech support numerous times

Partly cause I am not currently running FXtec as my daily driver, but on an unrelated issue, specifically with the Sony Xperia 10 ii, which AT&T by default said was not supported despite having the same LTE features as the Sony Xperia 10 (which I am currently using) after going through the first level of support I was able to get to a higher level tech support person who agreed that the features are the same and it shold be supported, so he opened a case (as of this writing still waiting to hear) but he did say that as long as they have the info that it has 4G LTE support it should not be a problem.

Any I have hope that they will allow pro¹x and even the pro¹ but we will likely need to be more proactive, and well honey gets more, so being nice on the phone helped I think

 

[Hook 3,043]

1 hour ago, mv said:

tldr; might require us to speak to AT&T tech support numerous times

Partly cause I am not currently running FXtec as my daily driver, but on an unrelated issue, specifically with the Sony Xperia 10 ii, which AT&T by default said was not supported despite having the same LTE features as the Sony Xperia 10 (which I am currently using) after going through the first level of support I was able to get to a higher level tech support person who agreed that the features are the same and it shold be supported, so he opened a case (as of this writing still waiting to hear) but he did say that as long as they have the info that it has 4G LTE support it should not be a problem.

Any I have hope that they will allow pro¹x and even the pro¹ but we will likely need to be more proactive, and well honey gets more, so being nice on the phone helped I think

 

Maybe, but I suspect your case was made much easier because they were Sony phones-- phones from a major known manufacturer.  I'm not confident that will work as well for an FxTec phone, but one can hope (Though I have moved to T-Mobile now). Agree about the honey...