This guide briefly discusses if you need a sim card to use your new cell phone.  For cell phone buff's this may be simple question, however, I see a lot of confusion out there on this issue and this guide straightens it out.  If you find this guide helpful, please click "Yes" in the blue title bar below, thanks for reading. 

A Sim Card is a little piece of plastic that has a memory chip on it that stores information about your cell phone account as well as personal information like your phone book.  These cards can be easily inserted into and taken out of the cell phone making it easy to switch phones.  See pictures of sim card below and where it is inserted into the phone. 

   Sim Card

   Sim Card Inserted into the Phone

There really are only two wireless companies in the US that use sim cards; they are T-Mobile and AT&T/Cingular Wireless.  These companies are referred to as GSM carriers.

All most all other carriers in the US do not use the GSM technology that uses a sim card.  These carriers are called CDMA carriers and they include the following:

1.  Verizon Wireless  2.  Sprint PCS Wireless  3.  Alltel Wireless  4.  US Cellular  5.  Cricket   6.  Metro PCS   7.  QWest

If you have a cell phone account with a CDMA carrier like Verizon, your phone does not use a sim card and will not work with one.  Sim cards only work with GSM phones.

 If you find this guide helpful, please help others find it by clicking "Yes" in the blue title bar below.  Check out my cell phones on eBay and thanks for reading.

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