What did Sprint sell my friend?

[Stephen Tashiro]

I went to a friend's house, thinking my mission was merely to get her new answering machine set up. She has a new ATT&T brand answering machine/wireless-phone set but she also has a device with an antenna. It's from Sprint. She has a receipt from Best Buy for the answering machine, but she insists she got all the equipment at the local Sprint store. She didn't find any paperwork from Sprint. I find that her wall jacks no longer give a dial tone (the local phone company is Centurly Link, formerly Qwest). It turns out that the gizmo from Sprint is for wireless phone service. You plug the answering machine into the Sprint gizmo and you get a dial tone.

She doesn't have a cell phone and she was using a dialup modem to get her email. Naturally this no longer works. I don't know if it would work with the Sprint gizmo or whether whatever "plan" she has allows such a connection. Sprint technical support was helpful in getting their device set up, but they won't give out any information about what plan she has unless the account number and a PIN are provided. My friend says she doesn't have any paperwork from Sprint yet.

Does the Sprint gizmo ring a bell with anyone? Anyone know what kind of "plan" she might have purchased?

[Brian Elfert]

Sprint has a home phone service for $20 a month with unlimited calling. The box from Sprint connects to their cell phone network for the calls. It appears the box is free with as 2 year agreement. I have my doubts that a modem will work well with the service.

How did she buy this service without even knowing what she was getting? Sprint must have arranged to have her Centurylink service disconnected.

[Matt Meiser]

I don't know about Sprints version but Verizon's (Home Phone Connect) doesn't support alarms, modems, fax, satellite receivers, etc.

She'd have to use an air card or mobile hotspot to get Internet through sprint.

Porting a number automatically terminates service.

[Steve Peterson]

We got a Verizon wireless home phone when my wife got a smart phone. It replaces the land line with a small box with an antenna. Unlimited home phone service for $20 per month compared to around $55 that we were paying to AT&T for the land line. The sound quality is horrible. We will keep it just for the $35 per month savings. I believe that it is for voice only, not really good for dial-up internet or any other data transfer.

It sounds like she has something similar from Sprint. They gave us a temporary phone number to try it out for a few days before we cancelled our land line. There is a phone number to call to transfer the old phone number to the new device.

[Eric DeSilva]

How did she buy this service without even knowing what she was getting? Sprint must have arranged to have her Centurylink service disconnected.

I'm guessing she must have ported her telephone number. If she consented to it being ported to the new service, Sprint would have coordinated with the old carrier to cancel the old service and initiate the number transfer.