First note - MVPs are other players. I don’t work for Blizz. I just have green text.
I have been watching this for years now since they started with the SMS Protect feature years ago.
The system Blizzard uses is based on the ID type assigned to the phone number. Blizz does not assign the number types. I honestly don’t know the phone industry well enough to even speculate on how it happens there.
Blizz decided they would only accept numbers flagged as contract cell phone numbers. Pre paid or VOIP were not accepted because they can easily be abused by hackers/spammers, etc. Burner phones are called that for a reason.
The issue with Cricket as I understand is that many of the numbers they have, are flagged as pre-paid, not contract, even though Cricket DOES have contract services. This is above Cricket to be honest. It is in the regulatory spaces. Cricket corporate could probably initiate proceedings to get the numbers changed from the original tags to the new use - but so few things depend on it the effort is rarely worth it to them.
Old example where I learned phone numbers have tags. Land lines vs Cell Phones back in the day - spam phone calls to cell numbers (based on the Id tag) were illegal because it cost people minutes. I never even knew numbers had “types” before that. Now they have separate cell types as well.
What is super frustrating is that getting the phone number type tag changed is not something you can do. Not something Blizz can do. Not even something a phone company can easily do - if they are willing. Cricket bought (or was assigned) blocks of numbers with pre-paid tags. getting that undone so they don’t register as burner phones is not easy.
So, I get why they don’t want burner phones (pre paid) or VOIP due to the fraud. BUT there has to be a better way to handle validating the free accounts than a phone number, right? Maybe?