I have recently purchased a unlocked bb 9550, i believe it was a rogers phone and it has a spot for a sim card. I'm with mts and when i insert my sim card i cant send texts and whenever i try to make a call it just connects me to the mts customer support. When i went to the mts store they told me that i cant use my sim card because its a rogers phone and that i would have to directly activate the phone without a sim card. My previous phone was a lg iq from telus and when i went to mts with that they gave me a sim and it works fine...

My question is can somehow use my mts sim card or do i have to give more money to mts and not be able to switch between my phones?

Help would be most appreciated

What country are you in?

The 9550 was designed for Verizon primarily as a CDMA phone.

Please verify that it is unlocked.

I'm in canada, manitoba to be specific. And when I bought the phone and inserted my sim it asked me to unlock it so I went online and got the mep code and unlocked the phone

Do you have a BlackBerry data plan from MTS?

Does MTS have the proper frequency bands for that device?

I just have the student plan, I get Internet but it's really slow. When I went it to mts they said because of their network that phone will only work if I activate it without a sim. I'd like to be able to switch between phones in case one dies or has issues and I don't feel like paying mts more money

You really need to get a device sold by MTS. If you can wait, BB10 is coming soon and then you can take advantage of MTS' 4G LTE network.

i just talked with the old owner of the phone and it was an mts phone, it even show the mts logo on start up and shut down. also i believe it is a CDMA type phone (i went to options then about and its says "smartphone (3G, CDMA, Wi-Fi)"

i guess the lady at mts is either ignorant or just trying to take of my money

The 9550 is a "world phone". It has CDMA bands as the primary bands and secondarily GSM bands.

Typically, CDMA carriers only allow devices branded to their network to be activated on their network.

Note that the CDMA side of the device does not use SIM cards, so it does sound like the representative was correct. The device may not have the proper HSPA bands for the MTS network. So you may not be able to activate it with them with a SIM card.

Correct. It does not have the right HSPA bands.

OP, please activate this device as a CDMA device if they will still do that for you.