Does AT&T have an open network?

As a current reseller who has within the past 6 months received letters from ATT stating that uncertified handsets are specifically prohibited and may lead to wholesale contract termination this statement is absolutely ridiculous.

AT&T's about as open as you are going to get from any wireless company unless in the future the US carriers decide to pick a single standard. That's not going to happen bacuse the carriers still look at technology as a way to differentiate from each other and even seek a competitive advantage.

AT&T network is not OPEN as in Open for the 700Mhz spectrum. It is open as you mentioned for any of their customers with GSM based handsets, just like VW.
AT&T OPEN (700MHZ)
Something to keep in mind: AT&T has already begun to gain a Nationwide License (on the cheap) by purchasing a large chunk of Lower Band C Block spectrum from Aloha Partners, and will be bidding, against smaller firms for the Lower Band A & possibly B Block license to fill in markets they do not have YTD.
By the way, all Lower Band 700Mhz spectrum does not have the required "OPEN Access" aspect that the Upper Band (C Block)does allowing AT&T to not only prepare to deploy a true 4G type network by aggregating C, A & B Block spectrum (as much as 30-40Mhz) but do it within a Walled Garden.
Watch how VW and Google play this auction card against AT&T that represents competition for both parties.

Jim (aka Jacomo)

Notwithstanding the business issue associated with being a reseller, I am curious about the comment that the requirement for a SIM card means 'hardly any handset'. SIMs are generally handset agnostic and can be moved from handset to handset without an activation procedure. I have certainly done that with T-Mobile's network. In Verizon's and Sprint's case there generally is not a SIM card so the only way you get on the network is to have them activate your specific phone (tied to a serial number) which also has to be unlocked if wasn't originally from the network you are trying to activate it on.

So in short, a GSM SIM card can pretty much be moved from device to device without any involvement by the operator but somehow Verizon's promise that someday you will be allowed to put any device on their network, provided it passes their TBD tests and they are willing to activate it, is something new and exciting. Slow news day?

I actually wrote "hardly 'any handset,'" which is a crucial distinction, Anonymous.

Sure, there are many GSM handsets on the market most of which will work on another GSM carrier's network if the frequencies match up (and so long as the device isn't already locked to a particular carrier's network--like my Tilt fom AT&T is.) 

According to the report, De la Vega told USA Today that his salespeople will start telling AT&T customers that they can use "any" phone on AT&T's network. No CDMA handset will work on AT&T's network. So his statement  is simply untrue.

What's new and exciting about Verizon Wireless' open access announcement and now AT&T's declaration that they are the "most open" network in the U.S. is that the two biggest carriers are promising and claiming to be/become more "open"--something many handset makers and nearly all mobile content developers have been waiting for for a long time. -Brian

Similar to the comments above, we are a current, large ATT reseller who has within the past 6 months received letters from ATT stating that any AT&T non-certified handset is strictly a violation of our reseller contract. This is the current situation for any reseller in the US for AT&T, all non-ATT certified devices are blacklisted. Meaning, if we have a client walk in with an unlocked GSM phone that is certified by CTIA, the FCC and a major handset vendor, but not by ATT, an ATT reseller CAN NOT activate a new SIM based on that device’s IMEI number.

The hypocritical point of this scenario is that if you’re a large corp. client, an actual AT&T business rep/employee will input a dummy IMEI numbers to trick the system, securing their commission & at times causes problems for the end user regarding wireless upgrades.

Furthermore, ATT recently shut down access to its global roaming packages to any non-ATT certified device. The truly misleading aspect of this issues is any ATT customer service phone rep will tell you over the phone (I’ve called many) that ATT customer service is instructed to provide Tier 1 data support and full voice support for any GSM device pending the device was never branded ATT (you didn't unlock your ATT phone).

Either Ralph isn’t aware (which is unlikely) or AT&T is simply jumping on the ‘open’ bandwagon. If you want open, call T-Mobile.

Allowing users to use any GSM phone on a network isn't new or exciting. I was doing this in 2002 when the original ATT first launched GSM. Open network is more than devices; its the services that users can get on their mobiles that really makes a network open. To me, an open network would allow me to user services from any service provider and pay for it the way I want to. Right now, ATT forces all service providers to use their billing system either via Premium SMS or through a Q-Pass integration. Any service provider that tries to go around this by using paypal or credit card is black listed. They actually block their customers from accessing the service by black listing the IP addresses of the services. So if I, as an ATT customer want to use a service that ATT doesn't offer, and want to use my credit card to pay for it, ATT will block me? Doesn’t seem very open to me.

De la Vega says "We are the most open wireless company in the industry." The reality is that they are about as open as Gitmo.

Cough, cough (Bullshit!)

It's not open. You can pay for "unlimited" wireless data, but you can't pass that data on to a computer. You can't download music from iTunes using it. You can't stream audio or video over it.

Verizon has had the same open access policy as far as handsets for a very long time (within cellular technology concerns). If the ESN is in the system and it can have the correct PRL and ERI put into it that it can be activated on the system. The only thing is not all the services that the phone is capable of may not work. IE data services would not work due to authentication on the VZW network because the software was hard coded to authenticate on a different network. As someone stated above VZW is opening access to developers to actually code software and that's what has to meet technical specs. The devices already to a point meet specs of current phones on the VZW network so this isn't much of an issue. I can already active just about any CDMA phone that's in the system if the device isn't locked by the previous carrier (cough Sprint cough) and I have access to change the PRL in the device so the CUSTOMER doesn't get charged for roaming on a non-partnered company. What differentiates the two companies is VZW is opening the doors on the software side of things not JUST devices.

I appears that AT&T has closed its network to unlocked phones, effective around December 1, 2007. I had two brand new unlocked GSM cell phones that could neither make nor receive phone calls with a SIM card from my AT&T cell service. Additionally, an old unlocked Blackberry that I used infrequently for cell phone service became unable -- around December 1 -- to make or receive phone calls. All three phones could send and receive text messages. After AT&T technical support escalated the issue to engineering, AT&T called and stated that they had blocked unlocked cell phones, to prevent fraud.

http://info-safety.blogspot.com/2007/12/at-blocks-unlocked-phones.html