

Sim-free iphone? Don't insert an EE sim card - undecisive
https://ee.response.lithium.com/portal/conversation/1284584

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autism_hurts
Someone care to explain what's going on here?

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Wintamute
Reading further down the Twitter conversation it sounds like if you don't buy
your iPhone outright from the Apple Store it'll lock to the first carrier you
try to connect it to. The lady on Twitter was pissed because she had a
unlocked phone, put an EE pay-as-you-go SIM in it on a 30 day contract, only
to find EE had locked her iPhone to EE, and wouldn't unlock for 6 months.

~~~
AmirS2
Looks like it's an Apple / iPhone 'feature' [0] so not directly EE's fault or
intention. EE's initial response was quite unhelpful though, probably through
misunderstanding. After all, who expects an unlocked phone to magically lock
itself?

[0]
[http://selfhelp.carphonewarehouse.com/SelfHelp/request.do?vi...](http://selfhelp.carphonewarehouse.com/SelfHelp/request.do?view\(\)=c%7Bd9c6aeb0-f0d2-11e0-763b-f20203001e3d%7D)

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micheljansen
Interesting, I've heard of this before with Orange (the parent company of EE).
A former colleague had used her sim lock free phone with an Orange SIM, after
which the phone would no longer accept non-Orange SIMs. The response from
Orange was nearly identical in her case and I don't think she ever got it
resolved.

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cameldrv
I don't think EE has the ability to carrier lock an unlocked phone. My guess
is that she bought an EE locked phone. Maybe the salesman at CPW made a
mistake or was running a little scam. If this were generally happening we
would have heard about it before now

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4ad
Why is this even possible, technologically speaking. Why did anyone think that
designing a system that gives this kind of control over your phone to your
carrier was a good idea. More importantly, why didn't anyone complain?

~~~
gergles
Apple is 100% in bed with the carriers. "Carrier support" bundles include a
lengthy list of lockdown features that Apple develops and supports, including
the ability for your carrier to:

\- turn off tethering (the OS 'helpfully' will give you the carrier's phone
number to call to let tethering-colored bits through and to collect their fee)
\- neuter FaceTime to only work over wi-fi \- prohibit you from editing the
APNs in use \- force your iPhone to always connect to an arbitrary wi-fi
hotspot without prompting \- automatically add the carrier's stock ticker to
the stock app

Source:
[http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Carrier.plist](http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Carrier.plist)

Apple has developed these malfeatures and continues to add new ones, showing
you who their real customers are. Let's not even get into how screwed up the
locking system is (you can _never_ really, permanently, 100% unlock an
iPhone.)

