A few weeks ago, I bought a SIM from Claro Ecuador to use in a fairly recent cellphone. I had several Claro SIMs over the years when traveling around Ecuador in different phones and they never triggered a countdown to being blocked. The new cellphone though receives this message every few days:
Hola. Tu equipo sera bloqueado en 25 dias, debido a que no cumple con la normative vigente para functional en el pais. Informate en BROKEN LINK
This roughly translates to: Your phone will be blocked in 25 days since it does not comply with the norms to function in the country. The link provided for more imported is always broken, returning a 404 page on the Claro website.
Speaking to Claro support they says that this was not their issue but that I had to file a homologation process with Arcotel, which is a free online service.
After registration, the form provides requires an IMEI, a brand and model. Upon submission it does some checks and verifies the consistency of the information. Unfortunately, the model of my new phone is not on the list and so it fails validation. I have tried dozens of other models from the same brand and other brands of the same company but it always fails.
It seems wrong that they force a model selection when the assumption is that the form is being filled because this is a phone not known to Arcotel!
Is there any way to pass homologation with a new phone model or change some settings on the phone so that it complies with the norms to operate in Ecuador?
