By the way here is another sprint user who has the 8830 and their network says "active".
Sprint 8830 Users w/ Sim cards - Page 2 - BlackBerry Forums at CrackBerry.com
I think its is as I said before, since the 8830 phones are CDMA and GSM, I think the rules regarding the "Active" and ""disabled" status of the phones are not really applicable here since we cant go active on a GSM network until we go overseas.