Talk:United States/@comment-24.4.12.176-20150517200454/@comment-135.23.178.88-20150608022431

@Wolfbin: " So you see, not even you know on which system you are operating" -  Every Nexus 5 that was sold for North America supports CDMA+LTE on Sprint and its MVNOs, as well as GSM+HSPA+LTE on a variety of bands. If you bring a North American Nexus 5 to Sprint they will offer to activate it on either a T-Mobile or Sprint SIM and you can choose. It is quite easily possible that this poster's Ting SIM is for Sprint.

Since LTE requires a SIM, all LTE devices of American CDMA carriers use a SIM card (except some but not all Sprint devices have an internal SIM that you can't swap). On Verizon the SIM carries a subscriber identity for both CDMA & LTE and can be hot-swapped just like on a GSM carrier. On Sprint it's a bit more muddled as some devices activate CDMA with a traditional MEID and LTE via the SIM card.

Anyway you're right that this page is intended for non-US visitors which makes the CDMA info not very useful. The only scenario I can think of where a visitor might activate on CDMA - is in fact if a Canadian brings a Nexus 5 and decides to activate it on Ting's Sprint service.