[Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE] androidjunkie71:
Yeah, it's a pain in the ass for sure...I have, let's say, X Amount of flashed phones around the country...and have been racking my brain trying to make sense out of it...and there's definitely theories all over the place but as this gentleman has described, the phones losing 3g is just collateral damage. I will say that less than 20% of my phones seem to be affected...I have found certain areas to be more troublesome than others, but if flashed correctly the data use doesn't even show up on Verizons side...but that's a different discussion all together. I've seen phones that had to have the data reprogrammed only once about 2 months ago & have not been bothered since, some that have only lasted a few hours each time it was done...it's completely up to Verizon at this point - I think they're rolling the keys based off tower output more than on a schedule though...if a particular tower seems to be sucking up a lot of data (because they can see it from an infastructure level) then they roll the keys on everything connected to that tower. I'm sure they're doing it on some sort of schedule as well, but the truth is, out of all of the devices that I have access to and have been logging behavior on, there is no real pattern at this point.

I honestly don't think they'll keep it up though after they find the heavy duty data abusers. Fiscally it will hurt them badly. As an example, in the past month I've moved about 30 customers from VZPP to an alternate carrier...I'm certain it's a safe assumption that I'm probably one of 10,000 (at least) in the US that do this type of thing on the same scale. If each of us move 30 accounts per month, that's 1.5 million per month in lost revenue per month that they're going to sustain just based off my estimate. That's not counting the 5 here, 5 there, couple over there, etc that are DIYers, etc. I'm guessing my estimate is probably very low...but for the sake of argument it's 1.5 Million in revenue a month that they don't have to advertise for, they don't have to provide tech support for, no customer service, no out of pocket cost except maintenance that they already do anyway. The network is still super fast & reliable, so they're nowhere near capacity obviously, so the beancounters at some point are going to have to evaluate which is the lesser of the two evils and I think the key rolling is going to be the greater. If my estimate is correct, that's 18 million per year in recurring revenue that they get on a total "no sweat" deal - I don't care how big a company is, you can't afford that loss.

It's also a safe assumption that they don't care much about the phones...I know, with my own infastructure knowledge, that given a month with their internal network and I could easily identify 80% or more of the flashed phones operating on it and remove them...considering they have a huge team of IT people and endless resources if they wanted them gone, they would be gone.

I honestly believe that this will eventually blow over as long as the flagrant abusers aren't shoving it in their faces and neener neener neenering them to death with the MiFi's which I've even seen for sale "No Bill" style on Amazon...

and people wonder why it's getting harder & harder to get answers, guides, etc from people that frontline this type of thing....hell I've seen laptops for sale on eBay with downloaded software & guides from this very site as well as others on how to flash "Item X" in a complete do it yourself bundle...then people that selfishly made a couple hundred bucks doing it cry because their stuff don't work anymore.

I figured out a couple of alternate ways to combat it very quickly, and some other solutions to keep people in the unlimited plans cheap but am afraid if I share it openly then it's just going to go viral and cause the same problems again...it wouldn't upset me at all if there were a more advanced "pay section" of this site for the serious people to share with each other & keep this type of thing under control. Just a thought. :D