Happens all the time with roaming and imported devices.
I’m not aware of any western provider saying “oh, that block of IMEIs aren’t allowed to connect to the network”.
Canadian government shadow-banned sales of a bunch of Xiaomi cell phones, but local providers have no issues authing them onto the network. Can’t say no to that juicy roaming revenue even if it means putting your network at risk.
US networks get cagey about certain phones. CDMA carriers were always restricive, but now that 2g and 3g are mostly shut down, they don't want to allow registration of LTE devices that don't do Voice over LTE with their network because it breaks the emergency service rules.
I don't think they'd block them from roaming if the device has a foreign network sim that's authorized to roam though. Of course, major US carriers basically don't allow their subscribers to roam to other major carriers.
I’m not aware of any western provider saying “oh, that block of IMEIs aren’t allowed to connect to the network”.
Canadian government shadow-banned sales of a bunch of Xiaomi cell phones, but local providers have no issues authing them onto the network. Can’t say no to that juicy roaming revenue even if it means putting your network at risk.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28620359