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iPhone iPhone 4S on Boost Mobile

Garbag3man117

Garbag3man117

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 12, 2011
45
0
Lafayette, IN
Hi. I am planning to buy an iPhone 4S, but I wouldn't like to be on a contract with a carrier. Boost mobile has very great deals, and I've heard of people that have been able to use their iPhone on it.

Boost uses Sprint towers, and I believe the same baseband. It uses CDMA, however, I believe you can get a SIM card for it. IDK, I just saw it on their website, under 'Activation'. I've looked all over the internet, but I haven't found any hard evidence, if you know what I mean.

Is there any way to achieve this? A way to change your ESN, or something like that?(Which, before anyone yells at me, is not illegal anywhere in the US.)

Or if I buy an unlocked iPhone 4S, will that work with a SIM card? Thanks for any help!
 
It's an unclear subject, I won't start up a debate on it. If you don't have anything useful, I would appreciate it if you do not simply point me wrong without any information to back up your statement.
 
a little legal speak for you and I doubt you will get help here! if it's no big deal ask Sprint and Boost Mobil to help you. also a unlocked iPhone does not unlock the CDMA.


Fraud

via the FCC
Cellular fraud is defined as the unauthorized use, tampering, or manipulation of a cellular phone or service. Cellular industry estimates indicate that carriers lose millions per year to cellular fraud, with the principal cause being subscription fraud. Subscriber fraud occurs when a subscriber signs up for service with fraudulently obtained customer information or false identification.
In the past, cloning of cellular phones was a major concern. A cloned cellular telephone is one that has been reprogrammed to transmit the electronic serial number (ESN) and telephone number (MIN) belonging to another (legitimate) cellular telephone. Unscrupulous persons obtain valid ESN/MIN combinations by illegally monitoring the transmissions from the cellular telephones of legitimate subscribers. Each cellular telephone is supposed to have a unique factory-set ESN. After cloning, however, because both cellular telephones have the same ESN/MIN combination, cellular systems cannot distinguish the cloned cellular telephone from the legitimate one.
The Commission considers any knowing use of cellular telephone with an altered ESN to be a violation of the Communications Act (Section 301) and alteration of the ESN in a cellular telephone to be assisting in such violation. The Wireless Telephone Protection Act (Public Law 105-172) was signed into law on April 24, 1998, expanding the prior law to criminalize the use, possession, manufacture or sale of cloning hardware or software. The cellular equipment manufacturing industry has deployed authentication systems that have proven to be a very effective countermeasure to cloning. Authentication supplements the use of the ESN and MIN with a changing encrypted code that can not be obtained by off-the-air monitoring.
 
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Once you purchase a phone, it is yours, the company should have no control over what you are going to do with it.
 
Invincibilizer said:
Once you purchase a phone, it is yours, the company should have no control over what you are going to do with it.
Click to expand...

You're right. However if you are going to do something ILLEGAL with it, then you can tell your !#$@# sob story to the federal judge you'll be standing in front of.
 
Garbag3man117 said:
Hi. I am planning to buy an iPhone 4S, but I wouldn't like to be on a contract with a carrier. Boost mobile has very great deals, and I've heard of people that have been able to use their iPhone on it.

Boost uses Sprint towers, and I believe the same baseband. It uses CDMA, however, I believe you can get a SIM card for it. IDK, I just saw it on their website, under 'Activation'. I've looked all over the internet, but I haven't found any hard evidence, if you know what I mean.

Is there any way to achieve this? A way to change your ESN, or something like that?(Which, before anyone yells at me, is not illegal anywhere in the US.)

Or if I buy an unlocked iPhone 4S, will that work with a SIM card? Thanks for any help!
Click to expand...

If Boost uses Sprint towers, then it must be a CMDA network
CMDA phones must be flashed to different networks and the network must agree to accept the phone onto it's network

I agree with the previous reply, ask Boost, they will give you the best answer about an iPhone
 
You can ask boost but I doubt they will add it to their system.
I know metro pcs does though. They dont care if the phone has a bad esn or not. There's some authorized Metro reselers that will flash it for you.
 
Wirelessly posted

Invincibilizer said:
Once you purchase a phone, it is yours, the company should have no control over what you are going to do with it.
Click to expand...

I agree to a point but you can own a car and there are still laws about removing or altering ir's vin numbers.
 
dhlizard said:
If Boost uses Sprint towers, then it must be a CMDA network
CMDA phones must be flashed to different networks and the network must agree to accept the phone onto it's network

I agree with the previous reply, ask Boost, they will give you the best answer about an iPhone
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll be contacting them. I doubt I'll get any help, though.

By the way it's CDMA, not CMDA. I said the exact same thing until someone corrected me :p

As for the legal status, yeah, I agree. It's your phone, and you can do whatever you want with it. Also, I never stated that I was in the US.
 
Garbag3man117 said:
Thanks, I'll be contacting them. I doubt I'll get any help, though.

By the way it's CDMA, not CMDA. I said the exact same thing until someone corrected me :p

As for the legal status, yeah, I agree. It's your phone, and you can do whatever you want with it. Also, I never stated that I was in the US.
Click to expand...

Then why mention Boost Mobile?
 
Garbag3man117 said:
Thanks, I'll be contacting them. I doubt I'll get any help, though.

By the way it's CDMA, not CMDA. I said the exact same thing until someone corrected me :p

As for the legal status, yeah, I agree. It's your phone, and you can do whatever you want with it. Also, I never stated that I was in the US.
Click to expand...

can you please post what you proceeded to do? i am in the same situation as you and am desperate for an answer...

thanks :)
 
labman said:
a little legal speak for you and I doubt you will get help here! if it's no big deal ask Sprint and Boost Mobil to help you. also a unlocked iPhone does not unlock the CDMA.


Fraud

via the FCC
Cellular fraud is defined as the unauthorized use, tampering, or manipulation of a cellular phone or service. Cellular industry estimates indicate that blah blah blah.
Click to expand...

I love how you took the time out to speak legal speak, good job ace! However you didn't even help the guy out with his Q. If he couldnt be helped here as you believe then maybe next time you can suggest a place that will help him. Grouchies...
 
BlondieSaysHi said:
I love how you took the time out to speak legal speak, good job ace! However you didn't even help the guy out with his Q. If he couldnt be helped here as you believe then maybe next time you can suggest a place that will help him. Grouchies...
Click to expand...

I love how YOU took the time out of your day to try to breath life into this thread that lost its pulse 3 weeks ago just to attempt to insult someone. Good job ace :rolleyes:
 
raulsalas said:
can you please post what you proceeded to do? i am in the same situation as you and am desperate for an answer...

thanks :)
Click to expand...

Well, since the thread has already been revived and I have some information, I decided not to go with Boost. They didn't give me any help, as customer service had no idea what CDMA was. I decided to go with T-Mobile prepaid. $30 bucks a month, no contract = 100 mins talking, unlimited texting, and unlimited data (5GB 4G speed, which is useless on iPhone). Pretty good for a cheapo like me, but I've heard that most people don't receive T-Mobile 3G on the iPhone in their area due to frequencies the iPhone doesn't support. I am able to get 3G speeds on my 4S with T-Mobile and the Gevey SIM. Guess I'm just lucky. Thanks for you help, guys, I guess :p.
 
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Hi may I asked which company you purchased your iPhone 4S from? cause I Have a sprint 4S & wanted to switch too but I didn't want to get the gevy sim unless I knew for sure if it works.
 
Biggums91 said:
Hi may I asked which company you purchased your iPhone 4S from? cause I Have a sprint 4S & wanted to switch too but I didn't want to get the gevy sim unless I knew for sure if it works.
Click to expand...

You can't use the Gevey SIM with Boost. First off, Boost is CDMA, like Sprint, and they don't use SIM cards. Second, if your 4S is on Sprint, it won't pay any attention to the SIM slot at all. To use the Gevey SIM with your iPhone, you must jailbreak it. It's pretty much impossible to use an iPhone on Boost.

I wish carrier locking was illegal in the US. It would make our lives so much easier....
 
labman said:
a little legal speak for you and I doubt you will get help here! if it's no big deal ask Sprint and Boost Mobil to help you. also a unlocked iPhone does not unlock the CDMA.


Fraud

via the FCC
Cellular fraud is defined as the unauthorized use, tampering, or manipulation of a cellular phone or service. Cellular industry estimates indicate that carriers lose millions per year to cellular fraud, with the principal cause being subscription fraud. Subscriber fraud occurs when a subscriber signs up for service with fraudulently obtained customer information or false identification.
In the past, cloning of cellular phones was a major concern. A cloned cellular telephone is one that has been reprogrammed to transmit the electronic serial number (ESN) and telephone number (MIN) belonging to another (legitimate) cellular telephone. Unscrupulous persons obtain valid ESN/MIN combinations by illegally monitoring the transmissions from the cellular telephones of legitimate subscribers. Each cellular telephone is supposed to have a unique factory-set ESN. After cloning, however, because both cellular telephones have the same ESN/MIN combination, cellular systems cannot distinguish the cloned cellular telephone from the legitimate one.
The Commission considers any knowing use of cellular telephone with an altered ESN to be a violation of the Communications Act (Section 301) and alteration of the ESN in a cellular telephone to be assisting in such violation. The Wireless Telephone Protection Act (Public Law 105-172) was signed into law on April 24, 1998, expanding the prior law to criminalize the use, possession, manufacture or sale of cloning hardware or software. The cellular equipment manufacturing industry has deployed authentication systems that have proven to be a very effective countermeasure to cloning. Authentication supplements the use of the ESN and MIN with a changing encrypted code that can not be obtained by off-the-air monitoring.
Click to expand...


These laws were put in place to keep criminals from cloning phones and using a normal customers account for criminal activity. They were not put in place to keep a customer who is paying his or her own bill and wanting to use the phone on another network....as long as said customer pays the final bill or etf with the carrier, they are not going to standing in front of any judge for doing this....
 
I want to bump this

Amezie seems like a bit of a self-righteous ass.
I was looking for similar information and came upon this thread. Absolutely fascinating to watch someone pontificate on an opinion. Considering that phones have their ESN modified regularly, how many people who are using this only to "unlock" a CDMA phone have spent time before a federal judge?

If I remember correctly, jailbreaking your phone was considered quasi-legal for quite a long period of time for violating the DMCA.


It seems that every thread on this forum I find about the topic of altering an ESN on a phone is immediately met my Amezie bringing down his grand legal wisdom. Even if Amezie is a practicing lawyer, I doubt that he has much experience in this area. I also doubt he can point to a single case where someone has gone before a judge for modifying one of their phones to look like another of their phones. If anything, this would be remarkably similar to the jailbreaking of iphones in general.

Labman's quoting of a defunct FCC regulation that was explicitly written to prevent a scenario(theft of service) that is not being discussed would seem to be vindication for the original post.
 
Here we go , opening an old thread back up. Flashing an iPhone to boost is not difficult but it's not for the DIYers. Most independent reseller shops that repair iPhones can do it. But it MUST be a sprint version iphone
Here is a page for one shop
http://www.dcboost.com/sprint-boost-flash.html
 
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