[E 2015 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] br0adband:
Recently I owned an LG L70 for MetroPCS and I purchased an unlock code from an online service which worked as expected - to clarify, the unlock code I purchased was the SIM unlock code which allowed me to make use of the L70 with T-Mobile. The thing about all that was that T-Mobile owns MetroPCS and I, being out of touch for a bit, didn't realize that the MetroPCS version of the L70 is carrier or service provider locked to MetroPCS itself and wouldn't work properly even with T-Mobile which provides the network access to MetroPCS in the first place.

So, on top of having the traditional SIM network lock there's also a service provider lock on top of that, at least with the MetroPCS L70.

Now it seems this Cricket Moto E I have is exhibiting the same behavior. I purchased an unlock code yesterday after I bought the Moto E itself, got the code this morning, powered off the Moto E, inserted my typical T-Mobile SIM card, powered on the Moto E, got the code entry screen, entered the code and voila, successfully unlocked.

Now, having said that, and while I see the 4G LTE icon on the status bar it's ghosted meaning there's no data connection. I have a connection to T-Mobile, I can make calls (called customer service, etc) and that works great. But the data connection simply doesn't function at all - that's exactly the same behavior exhibited by the L70 I had for MetroPCS. After doing some research I was able to discover a method to do a provider network aka service provider unlock on the L70 using the service codes (*#*# kind of stuff which LG supports on most models, think it was *#*#2945-whatever then changing some options in a menu).

After that, the L70 worked fine with T-Mobile without any problems for data. I did also need to set the proper APN and then I set the radio info (*#*#4636#*#*) to WCDMA preferred which works best for me (and the L70 is not an LTE capable device anyway).

But now I'm stuck with this Moto E that's SIM unlocked, connects to T-Mobile in terms of phone call usage but not data. Because the Moto E doesn't support the dialer service codes I ended up using an app I purchased (SignalCheck Pro) which has some shortcuts to those hidden options (radio info) and there I set it for WDCMA preferred, then I went back to the cellular network options in Settings to set the proper APN, etc. - all this stuff is pretty much regular for most XDA users so I don't need to go into extreme details.

Having said that, it appears there's a service provider lock on this Moto E and I'm stumped as to how to get it removed. I'm guessing that there aren't different "levels" of an unlock code that Cricket would provide, i.e. one code will just remove the SIM lock so you can make use of other carrier's SIM cards and then another code which would remove the SIM lock and remove the service provider lock too.

I can't find any list of known or working Motorola dialer codes that would get me into the same kind of menu the L70 uses to remove the network lock - to be honest I can't even remember the specific steps to get it all done but it was the two-step process: SIM unlock code and then remove the service provider lock, after that I could use the T-Mobile SIM card with voice/data and no issues.

If anyone has any info, tips, or suggestions I'm all ears, figuratively speaking... at this point I can't even really sell this Moto E as "unlocked" since it apparently isn't fully functional in traditional smartphone terms. I'll keep it if I have to, of course, but it sure would be nice to figure this out even if it's just for research purposes that might help others attempting to do the same type of unlocking.

Thanks...

Just to clarify: SIM unlock was successful, but data isn't functional - did all the typical adjustments (APN correct, radio set to WCDMA preferred, phone call functionality works 100%, enabled data connection in radio info had no effect, etc) and still no active data connection will come up. Tried setting it for data roaming, still not successful. Everything works but the data connection, T-Mobile service is active without issues, same SIM card works in the L70 without issues in a straight swap.

Edit:

I have 3 T-Mobile SIMs that are active presently (don't ask) and they all exhibit the same issue of no data; they work fine for phone calls, just no data connection. The same 3 SIMs exhibited the same behavior with the LG L70 until I did that two-step process of removing the SIM lock and the service provider lock so I have no idea what to do at this point assuming that something can actually be done.

Of course I could be off my rocker and just missing something very simple here too, it's happened before. :D