I have a Blackberry that I want to sell. I got it from Cincinnati Bell. I want to know what other companies it would work with so I could list it as a phone which works with Cincinnati Bell and other companies. Does anyone know? I have heard that it all depends on the frequency of the phone and that T Mobile works on the same frequency, at least with iPhones but I don't know if that applies to the Blackberry. Thank you for any light you can shed on this.

CBell is GSM which can be used on AT&T and T-mobile as far as major carriers go.  There's two frequency blocks used by GSM.  From what I can tell about CBell your phone probably uses GSM 1900, but you'd want to look more into with your manual or online.

You'd be better off looking at the box and listing the frequencies the phone works at. If it is a quadband phone (850/900/1800/1900 mHz) as most Blackberries are, just list that. If it is 3G (1700/2100 mHz) as some of the newer Bbs are, list that too. It is much easier to do that. If it is quadband, it will work with any GSM carrier (read: Not Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, etc.)

Ah thanks. Now I know a lot more than I did before.

 

I did just get off the phone with a guy who unlocks BB's and he told me that more people want a Blackberry which works with Cincinnati Bell than they do a Blackberry which is unlocked and that I would be better off selling it wiped through Criag's List than to go through the trouble of unlocking it and going through e-Bay. Who knew? He says that he can't even unlock Cin Bell because he has no demand for the non-CinBell phones.

 

 

You'd be better off looking at the box and listing the frequencies the phone works at. If it is a quadband phone (850/900/1800/1900 mHz) as most Blackberries are, just list that. If it is 3G (1700/2100 mHz) as some of the newer Bbs are, list that too. It is much easier to do that. If it is quadband, it will work with any GSM carrier (read: Not Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, etc.)

 

Neville is correct, except for the 3G bands ... there is a 850/1900/and 900Mhz HSDPA band as well.

 

The two he listed tells me that he has a phone that will work with TMO, At&t, Cincy Bell, etc., but was designed to work on TMO's 3G network. If he had said 900Mhz in place of the 1700Mhz then I'd know he had a phone built for At&t's network and not TMO's.

 

Fab, the guy you spoke to doesn't sound like he's making much sense. Typically BB's are unlocked by USB cables, but carriers do not play too much of a role anymore in the ability of the phone to be unlocked, the reason the it was at one point was because of "basebands."

 

Also, believe it or not Cincy Bell has a few phones that are unlocked out of the box.

 

There is no doubt that you'll get 15-20% return on your BB selling it unlocked than it being carrier locked. If I have a phone that can be used on 4 networks versus 1, in other words I'm quadrupling my customer base ... why would I not get more from it? Simple economics here.