It didn't work, I tried to manually connect to other service providers (Roaming) and the connection was rejected. I liked to believe the others service providers automatically blocked Rogers customers to keep their service alive.
His point was that you could do that for 911, not for actual roaming service.
I'm no expert but I feel like roaming still require some sort of "authentication" over the original network and obviously Rogers would have failed on that part.
I think that would work. Just tried it and while I got “zero bars”, going into field test mode showed I was sitting connected to another roaming network with limited service.
This may not work if Rogers is the strongest signal as the handset may latch to it despite its non-functional state.
And that’s for any handset without a SIM, an originally Rogers handset or not.