17 May 08 04:27, Bob Ackley wrote to Roger Nelson:

 BA> Replying to a message of Roger Nelson to Roy Witt:

 RW>>> remove the battery. Slipped the SIM into the backup and was back up
 RW>>> and running again. Bought another one the day before yesterday to
 RW>>> replace the dead one.

 RN>> Yeah, but isn't the phone serial number linked to AT&T? I mean you
 RN>> could place the chip into any phone, but it won't work because the
 RN>> serial number won't be recognized.  Right?

 BA> A cell provider does have to 'introduce' the phone to its system.  I
 BA> presume it's done by extracting the internal numbers from the phone
 BA> and somehow equating them to the phone number that it will then
 BA> respond to.

 BA> I'm not clear on exactly how it's done.  It occurs to me that one
 BA> calls the number assigned and somewhere along the line that number is
 BA> converted to the permanent ID numbers in the phone and those numbers
 BA> are the ones the cell system uses to track it down and connect to it.

Everything they need to know is provided by the SIM chip they install when
you sign up for their service. Your SIM was activated before your phone
could make a single call. Look under the battery and you can see it. It's
removable and doing so won't hurt anything. It can be placed in another
phone and used when you turn the phone on again. The 'software' in the
phones will take care of the identity, as in serial numbers, etc..

                R\%/itt



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