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There is the concern that device might only support 4G LTE on AT&T for data, but 3G for voice.

What exact device is it (model, carrier, etc.) and where did you get it?

My device is a TRIPLTEK T7121

purchased new from Amazon last week. It was never used on any carrier prior to my purchasing it (as far as I know).

My current troubleshooting with AT&T is that they are asking me to get a different SIM card at the AT&T store to see if that resolves the issue. The manufacturer (TRIPLTEK) told me that they have heard if this issue before and it has ben resolved with a different SIM card.

Can you explain why a device that only support 3G for voice but 4G LTE for data might not work on AT&T?

Because the 3G network is going away, and new activations are not allowed.

Except that my tablet phone is activated on 3G (I can place and receive calls and I can place and receive SMS messages) so AT&T is activating my device on their 3G network. The problem I am having is that I want to be able to get mobile data using 4G LTE, which my device is capable of.

Talking with other TRIPLTEK owners, I found out so far:

• 4G LTE works when using Straight Talk (which is ironic since Straight Talk is an MVNO and uses AT&T towers, among others)
• 4G LTE works when using Mint Mobile (also an MVNO using T-Mobile towers)

Both of these options seem very straightforward - you buy the service for whatever period you want, pop the SIM in and it just works. I'm sure there are other carriers and MVNOs that work with my device as well, it's frustrating that AT&T is so difficult to find someone that I can work with that can make my device work on the AT&T network, especially give that my device CAN work on the AT&T network when using an MVNO.

You don't seem to understand the difference between "new activations" and "already activated." Existing 3G devices haven't been cut off yet, but they will be in February. New activations have already stopped.

If your device does support VoLTE, apparently AT&T has some sort of whitelist that only allows VoLTE on specific devices. It sounds like your device might not be whitelisted.

Yes, I do understand the difference between "new activations" and "already activated". Clearly they are doing new activations since my device was activated just a few days ago.

And, as I posted previously, my device can use the AT&T network as a 4G LTE device since people are doing it using an MVNO like Straight Talk.

Another TRIPLTEK user told me that he asked AT&T to give him a proxy IMEI so that the device can be added as a 4G device, so I am going to the store to see if I can get that to work.

AT&T sometimes still let's new activations through. But, the eventual IMEI sweep that randomly happens may pick up your device as non-compliant and cut the SIM off.

Google "devices that will work after 3G shutdown AT&T" and you will find the PDF that AT&T updates every few months showing the whitelisted devices.

AT&T is already cutting people off ahead of the shutdown. That way they won't have a sudden surge of customer service calls next Feb when 3G goes dark.  Some people have been able to get their devices back on, but they are just delaying the inevitable.

Calls and text all go over the 3G on most every device.  Unless they support AT&T's version of Voice over LTE (VoLTE). They market it as "HD Voice". But that's the problem. Without VoLTE, when the 3G gets shut down (so AT&T can re-farm those frequencies for 5G), devices that rely on it for calls and text will go silent.  

I spoke at length with an AT&T rep who has been working as a support person at AT&T for 14 years. She told me that they used to be able to submit a ticket to map an IMEI from a hardware device (phone, tablet, etc…) to another IMEI that they would just choose from a list for a device that was similar enough to the device the customer was trying to get provisioned on the AT&T network. So if a customer had a BYOB unlocked device with an IMEI that AT&T didn’t recognize and so would not get provisioned with all the capabilities of the customer device, the rep could choose an IMEI for a device that had similar capabilities and have the network database map that new IMEI to the customer device by associating it with the SIM card info (ICCID). This would “stick” since it became a permanent part of the network database.

Some time back she said the reps were not able to do this type of mapping anymore, but they could substitute an IMEI that they chose and map it to the customer’s ICCID, so from the customer’s perspective, things worked the same way, however this mapping would be only temporary and when the network decided to refresh its database and associate the customer’s real hardware IMEI with the customer’s ICCID, the mapping would be deleted, and the customer would be back with either no service or degraded 3G service. She said this could happen in a day, a week, a month, a year, she had no way of telling. So, in my case, it had nothing to do with AT&T not wanting to provision my device because it was 3G (for voice) only, it had to do with AT&T not wanting to provision a BYOB device that they didn't know about and which they didn't care enough about to understand if it would work when 3G went away.

With that information, I chose to abandon trying to get my TRIPLTEK Pro on the AT&T network as an additional line on my existing AT&T account and instead looked at no-contract MVNO options. I chose to try Mint Mobile on a 7-day free trial so that I could evaluate the T-Mobile network to see if I wanted to stay with it as the network for my tablet phone. The pricing for the plan I am considering is comparable to adding a line to my AT&T account, so that’s a wash. If I don’t get good coverage or performance from Mint Mobile, I’ll try Straight Talk next and see how well that works.

The thing about Mint Mobile that really impressed me was that I paid $2 for the SIM card at Target, put it in my tablet phone, installed the Mint Mobile app, activated the free trial and I was on the air at 4G LTE speeds and with voice, text and data in under 5 minutes. Compare that with the DAYS I spent working with AT&T to try to get 4G LTE service on my tablet phone (and was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so).

https://vimeo.com/355556831