Will New Old Stock Cingular Phone Work

[lilsurelybeans]

Hey,

My mom's phone is on its last leg. She wants to use my old unlocked Sony Ericsson, but I know it will be too complicated for her. She's slow with electronics. Anyhow, I'm thinking of buying her a "new" old stock phone on eBay that is the same model she is used to. I'm just not sure if it will work. She got our plan after the AT&T became Cingular...I was in college on an old AT&T plan and had to switch to a new Cingular phone. This was 2004 or 2005. We both still have the old sim cards. I can't give more info on the cards because the sticker came off my sim card the last time I put it into a new phone.

I think her current phone might have the Cingular logo on it, just as this "new" old stock one does. If we take her Cingular (after AT&T merger) sim card and put it in a new Cingular locked phone will it work? I wonder if AT&T did some kind of grandfathering in type thing that allowed her to keep using her phone when Cingular ceased to exist and it became AT&T again. If something like that happened maybe it's now too late to activate a phone like this. If it helps it is a Nokia 3120. I've also heard that Cingular didn't lock tri or quad band phones (which the 3120 is). Ordinarily I wouldn't be worried about swapping a sim card out of a phone into another of the same model, but the seller seemed to think it might not activate because it says "Cingular" on the box.

Also, she doesn't want to go to AT&T and sign up for a new contract and phone. She'd lose her insane minutes allowance and unlimited wireless to wireless. She is also getting a discount as a school employee which isn't offered any longer. Data speed is not an issue...she doesn't even text.

The phone is cheap I might buy it anyway to see if I can swap out the case, battery, and keypad for her anyway.

Thanks!

[Mango808]

All you need to do is swap her SIM card into the "new" old stock Nokia 3120 and that should be it. No need to activate it with AT&T or anything else and she should be fine with her current plan as is.

I know the Nokia 3120 I had could use both the pre-merger and post-merger SIM cards from Cingular as it was not locked.

The current AT&T is still really Cingular just renamed as AT&T since the AT&T brand is known more worldwide.