Mobile Carriers in the United States

[KC9UDX]

It's possible that different accounts have different RF band permission. For instance, an AT&T unlimited plan might work different than a "pay as you go" plan or various plans with AT&T network MVNOs.

So you pretty much have to try out each plan on each service to know if it's going to work.

I don't have a PinePhone, but I've done the "bring your own device" thing on discount MVNOs about a dozen times over the years. So I've run into these "gotchas" a lot. Sometimes it's possible to find the actual technical restrictions of a given plan, sometimes it is not.

These appear to be the bands the PinePhone will work on:

Code:

LTE: B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B8, B12, B13, B18, B19, B20, B25, B26, B28, B38, B39, B40, B41
WCDMA: B1, B2, B4, B5, B6, B8, B19
GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 (MHz)

Are there current software restrictions on this?
At least you can mostly eliminate some plans just knowing this.