[jman069]

Due to a lawsuit back in '06 or '07 both Sprint and Verizon had to open up their networks which I think you'll find some info under Open Device Development or Open network.

Basically from what I remember is that if you have a Device from one carrier and have the MSL you could use it on the other carrier.

The only limitation I remember at the time of the announcement was that each company had to do their own testing to ensure the device wouldn't cause any issues on their networks and therefore each year each company was suppose to text x amount of phone and certify them to be able to be used.

From my understanding all manufactures would have to do is supply each carrier with ESN's and testing devices which I don't see any problem with that since both carriers work with the same manufactures.

Now to the roadblocks... This isn't heavily advertised yet as two or three years into this I'm sure neither carrier has devoted too many resources to this and it also begs the question about exclusivity on the phones in that maybe the competing carrier may not receive testing phones or ESN's for x amount of time. Since this hasn't been heavily advertised I highly doubt regular customer care or at least newer employees would even be aware of this and most certainly would require a conversation with tech support (though many seasoned employees are aware of the announcement however no one knows of anyone who's actually tried, but I'm sure the calls will start rolling in as the phone wars finally heat up on compatible carriers).

On the flipside Nextel's almost sole device manufacture was Motorola until recently so I'm sure there's a good relationship there and either Sprint will get the Droid 3 to 6 months down the road or maybe allow us to activate it under Sprint.

Also two years ago we had more dumbphones than we had smart phones and most dumbphones used java/brew which was tied to the carrier and would limit most data services to that carrier though you'd still be able to use voice services on the other carrier. Now with Windows Mobile & Android I honestly don't see why we wouldn't be able to switch carriers as long as the device has been certified as those platforms are not carrier specific (though they do have carrier specific apps) and even if the software was tied to them we'll always have PPC Geeks and XDA to fix that!

Hope this helps and is why I'm thinking it is indeed possible.