my ipad Air 2 wifi+4g was stolen, can i disable it being activated?

I`ve lost phones in the past but they were on ios 7 and i found out with my phone that i found you cannot activate it with ios 8 if you have called the provider (like i did) but does it work the same way on ipads running ios 8?

Can my provider disable it from being activated

*it was a gift from family and i dont remember if it was locked but does that matter because we all use the same provider anyways*

what if the person sells my ipad could i still track my ipad and get it back