SIM card issue for Virgin Mobile phone

July 14, 2016 7:04 AM

I have a month-to-month account with Virgin Mobile, and I switched my phones recently by calling in and providing a unique identification number for my new phone. Everything worked great, my phone works great, and this was all done with the phone not having a SIM card installed. My problem now is that the phone thinks that it needs a SIM card, and gives me a notification regularly that "4G LTE will not work" as "SIM/UICC is removed".

It's pretty annoying and constantly there, and from what I can tell, there isn't a workaround to remove the notice unless the phone is rooted, and I'm not interested in doing that. So the question isn't "how to remove the notification" at this point, but whether there's a way to make the phone think there's a sim card installed. Can I install one that would be detected for a phone that is already in service? Or, is it possible that I'm actually missing this feature that could be activated by adding a SIM card?

posted by SpacemanStix to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Virgin Mobile SIMs are 3G only (in the UK at least - I don't know your location), so the error message makes some kind of sense. VM will begin selling 4G SIM-only tariffs later this year, I think.
posted by Dan Brilliant at 2:50 PM on July 14, 2016

Your phone works because Virgin Mobile runs on the Sprint network in the USA. Their older CDMA service does not use a SIM card so your phone will work with their CDMA service without a SIM. However, LTE is a GSM service and does require a SIM card. This is why Sprint (and Verizon, which was also historically CDMA) now sell phones having SIM card slots.

Virgin Mobile apparently does support LTE in the US, so you could see about getting a SIM card from them. Otherwise, see if you can turn off LTE on your phone. If you post what kind of phone you have, maybe someone can help you with that.
posted by kindall at 3:18 PM on July 14, 2016

Thanks for the help! It ends up that my phone (HTC Desire 816) was supposed to come with the SIM, but it was either forgotten or accidentally disposed of. Virgin is sending me a new one, and it should resolve the error.
posted by SpacemanStix at 6:10 PM on July 14, 2016