Dual-SIM phone setup

[DonJuane]

Have never been a Verizon customer but if venturing a guess, the conversion of the phone to eSIM would (if thinking logically) disable the reading of a "physical SIM" when one is inserted but you'd have to speak to a Verizon expert who understands the features of your phone model to figure that out. Also I don't know how MoviStar "roams" and who they partner with in the USA and if it that partner provides LTE as one of MoviStar roaming customer's choices or not. In contrast, if roaming with MoviStar in the US only provides the capability of GSM at 3G speeds then it would be logical that a Verizon based phone would not support MoviStar in the US because phones made for Verizon use LTE for 4G and then default back to the old CDMA/EV-DO for 3G/2G service. If MoviStar only partners with 3G GSM/HSPA+ companies in the US such as T-Moibile and AT&T, that means you'd be out of luck with a Verizon phone that focuses primarily on providing LTE for 4G and then falls back to the old CDMA/EV-DO protocol for 3G and lower (instead of GSM/HSPA+). And I would assume the Verizon phone you have now will not be able to communicate on the GSM/HSPA+ bands that AT&T and T-Mobile use but that would all depend on the particular phone's features.

If you are saying that this particular Verizon phone worked at one time with a MoviStar chip while in Mexico, the only thing I can figure out is that perhaps your Verizon phone was communicating with a MoviStar LTE tower in Mexico that was using a LTE frequency that a typical Verizon LTE phone supports. And it could also be the reason the phone won't work with a MoviStar SIM chip in the USA is for certain any LTE partner for MoviStar in the USA would be using different bands and perhaps the LTE partner band in the USA is not Verizon and thus one that this Verizon phone doesn't support. So there are many situations which could cause the setup not to work. It's also entirely possible that there is simply no LTE service provided at all for roaming MoviStar customers in the USA and if that's the situation, it may be that only 3G speed service is available to those customers. If it is indeed only 3G/2G support then since the default 3G/2G service for MoviStar in Mexico is GSM/HSPA+, that would demand a roaming GSM customer be forced to use a GSM/HSPA+ capable phone in the USA and if that is indeed the situation, that would mean you'd need a GMS/HSPA+ 3G/2G phone which would include only unlocked phones designated originally to support 3G/2G GSM/HSPA+ which would include in the USA only T-Mobile or AT&T because Verizon phones when forced into 3G service go to their previous protocol which is CDMA/ED-VO and there are no phones I am familiar with that can default down to 3G using either/or CDMA/ED-VO or GSM/HSPA+, so it's pretty much set that while 4G LTE is only restricted by which model phones support which LTE bands, when any phone has to "fall back" to 3G/2G then the phone will typically if a Verizon phone fall back to CDMA/ED-VO protocol and fall back to GSM/HSPA+ protocol if MoviStar, TelMex, T-Mobile or AT&T (e.g. NOT Verizon.)

To see if MoviStar roams to LTE in the US, it might be worth trying the MoviStar SIM card in a phone that's LTE capable and has been unlocked and originally provisioned to AT&T or T Mobile in order to check if the card is still active and then if it connects to a partner US network's LTE service or if it just defaults to 3G/2G (indicating MoviStar only utilizes GSM/HSPA+ when in the USA). If the test LTE phone does connect to a LTE partner with the named LTE connection showing active on the screen (e.g. connected to T-Mobile or AT&T LTE or even Verizon LTE) then that would indicate a strong possibility that the issue of your SIM not working is completely caused by converting from SIM to eSIM. On the other hand if you see the MoviStar chip placed in the test phone only utilize a 3G/2G partner's network and it ignores the LTE capability that T-Mobile or AT&T based phone is capable of, then you can assume that MoviStar only provides 3G/2G service in the US and thus requires a phone which defaults to GSM/HSPA+ for 3G/2G and not CDMA/EV-DO for 3G/2G like a LTE Verizon phone will. Now that's my educated guess as to what the issue is.

**** this article says that MoviStar partners with AT&T which would mean the Verizon phone in the US would need to access either an AT&T LTE band or have a fallback to AT&T's GSM/HSPA+ network in order for MoviStar to roam into the US, which I am assuming that your Verizon LTE and CDMA/EV-DO 3G/2G backup will not help you attain. https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3...astructure Still I think I'd start with getting rid of the eSIM and going back to hard SIM cards if that's an option for you.

Otherwise ir you wish to summon further opinions you might try posting this over on the Chapala group. They seem the best at worming their way through "the matrix" and if anyone has made a path, usually one of them has cut that path or is not too far behind the one "who's cutting one" ;-) .

https://www.chapala.com/wwwboard/webboard.html

**** Updated this post to include extended syntax for CDMA/ED-VO 2G/3G architecture (Verizon) and GSM/EDGE/HSPA+ 2G/3G architecture (AT&T, T-Mobile, MoviStar, Telcel, etc.)