Patent ID: 8457630

Claim:
A method of transferring a handheld device from a previous subscriber's mobile carrier to a new subscriber's requesting mobile carrier, comprising: receiving at a supplier provisioning system, from the requesting mobile carrier, a request to register the device on the requesting mobile carrier's wireless network; querying, at the supplier provisioning system, a database included in the supplier provisioning system and storing a plurality of previous registrations for a plurality of devices, the registrations comprising device identifiers, associated unique billing identifiers (BID), and associated previous carrier identifiers, to determine if the device has been previously registered to the previous subscriber's mobile carrier; when the device has been previously registered to the previous subscriber's mobile carrier, determining whether a previously registered BID associated with the device is based on a device identifier of the device; when the determination of whether a previously registered BID associated with the device is based on a device identifier is affirmative, deactivating the device from the previous subscriber's mobile carrier's wireless network; upon confirmation that the device has been deactivated from the previous subscriber's mobile carrier's wireless network, registering the device on the requesting mobile carrier's wireless network using a different unique BID associated with the device; and upon registration of the device on the requesting mobile carrier's wireless network, updating the database with the different BID.