

AT&T will unlock your iPhone for free starting tomorrow - jeffreyshaw
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/04/att-confirms-plans-to-begin-unlocking-some-iphones-on-april-8.ars

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chollida1
> According to AT&T, the iPhone you want to unlock can't be associated with a
> current active term commitment, and you must already be out of your contract
> terms (usually two years from purchase) or you must have paid an early
> termination fee. Your account must be in good standing, too—no $700 overdue
> phone bills for you.

I don't see anything that seems overly strict here. You finish the contract
you signed up for, or pay the early termination fee and also make sure your
bill is paid.

What is overly strict about this? This seems to be more common sense than
anything.

~~~
edj
It's strict in comparison to other carriers. T-Mobile, for example, has long
had a policy of unlocking phones after the first 90 days of the two year
contract.

It's not exactly common sense either. If you unlock your phone, you could
theoretically use it with another carrier, but you're still on the hook with
AT&T for the full two year contract. Since they get there money from the
contract regardless, why should the contract and unlocking have anything to do
with one another?

Both the old policy and the new policy are bad for customers with (slightly)
unusual use cases, like travelers.

When I had T-Mobile, I could buy cheap SIM cards in any country I went to, and
put them in my Blackberry. I had all my contacts. I had one charger and one
device. Now when I travel I have to buy a cheap feature phone for calls, but I
also need to keep the iPhone around as a very expensive and conspicuous
Rolodex. It's definitely a step backward in convenience.

~~~
X-Istence
This is not true at all. I was a loyal T-Mobile customer for almost 8 years, I
upgraded my contract, signed another two year contract (at year 6 of being a
customer) and 6 months in I asked if they could unlock my phone because I was
traveling to Europe and they told me that they don't do that until your
contract that is up, and even then it was limited to a small subset of phones.

I ended up selling my phone on eBay and purchasing an iPhone 3G from a friend
which I unlocked by jail breaking it!

~~~
edj
I don't dispute your experience; I can only speak from mine.

I had T-Mobile from around 2003 or 2004 to August 2010. Every time I got a new
phone (always subsidized with a new contract) I called immediately to ask them
to unlock it so I could travel more easily. Each time they told me I had to
wait 90 days. So I'd wait 90 days, call back, and then they'd send me the
unlock code. Never had a problem.

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jnorthrop
That seems like a fair move on AT&T's part and a nice PR opportunity. The
article characterizes AT&Ts requirements as "strict" but I disagree. I think
it is completely reasonable that they expect you to finish the contract you
signed with them and have no outstanding balance.

~~~
pyre

      > I think it is completely reasonable that they expect
      > you to finish the contract you signed with them
    

1\. What if I want to go abroad and just buy a cheap local SIM instead of
paying a small fortune to AT&T for international roaming during my contract
period?

2\. Unlocking the phone doesn't have the effect of terminating the contract.
Once the phone is unlocked, you just have an unlocked phone under a contract.
If you decide to terminate your contract at any time, then you still have to
pay the early termination fee. It's not like unlocking your phone gets you out
of your contractual obligations.

------
po
I'm going to go and demand they unlock the first generation iPhone I bought
the fist day they were released (for the full $600 price) just on principle.
Still a bit annoyed that it was locked since it wasn't subsidized at all,
although I knew what I was getting in to.

~~~
w1ntermute
> Still a bit annoyed that it was locked since it wasn't subsidized at all

Wasn't the original iPhone (at release) $600 with contract?

~~~
watmough
Why yes, yes it was. Mine still works, and is currently playing BBC Radio 4 in
the other room. I think I will go get it unlocked.

This is great news from AT&T, but kind of exasperating, since I splashed out
$702 for an unlocked iPhone 4S _exactly_ so I could didn't have to pay vastly
more money to end up with an iPod Touch / paperweight at the end of a 2-year
contract.

I imagine that this scenario, plus the fact that other carriers will do an
unlock 'for overseas' (nudge-nudge wink-wink) has driven AT&T into recognizing
that they will lose many many customers, unless they start unlocking.

------
runjake
Verizon will "unlock" the SIM unit in their iPhone 4S units if you've been a
customer in good standing for 60 days and the iPhone is on an active plan.

However, it's not a real unlock -- it just allows you to use any GSM SIM
_EXCEPT_ from US carriers.

I went back and forth between Apple and Verizon about it back in December,
trying to get a true unlock but each blames the other. It seems clear at this
point that it's the carriers being the jerks.

I hope Verizon will get similarly bad press about this and follow suit.

~~~
ben1040
I am on Verizon and will not switch away (grandfathered into unlimited data,
and AT&T coverage at my house is the pits).

Back in November I wanted to get an iPhone 4S. I was not upgrade eligible, so
I'd have to pay full retail price.

If you pay full retail for an AT&T iPhone, the phone is automatically fully
unlocked (this practice seemed to have quietly began around when the 4S was
launched). You're basically buying the unlocked model even if you didn't ask
for it. However, there was nothing indicating that this was the case if you
bought it for Verizon and paid full retail.

I only keep my phones for a year or so and then sell them on. Not having the
phone fully unlocked hurts the resale value. A phone that will only do EVDO a
year from now just isn't worth as much as a phone that could do HSPA+.

~~~
yuhong
I don't think the Verizon iPhone 4 has support for GSM at all.

~~~
runjake
The 4 doesn't, but we're talking about the 4S, which does.

------
seppo
I just called AT&T and they gave me a rundown. The phone must:

1\. Have been purchased through AT&T 2\. Not be stolen 3\. Have its 2 year
contract fulfilled 4\. BE ACTIVE ON YOUR ACCOUNT

The last one is the kicker and something NO news service has reported on up
until now. It has to have its own line on your current bill and 'be active'. I
asked 3 times what 'be active' meant, and the best they could explain was that
it must have service and 'have been used' (i.e. phone calls made/accepted on
it).

I asked if I could add it as a line, and she said yes: $36 activation fee,
plus $9.99 per month, and then you have to use it. Then they can unlock it.
There's no contract minimum time limit that you have to fulfill to do this (I
was told...I was transferred to their activation department which was closed
today, so I don't have more details), so as best as I can assume - set it up,
use it for a couple of days, make sure your bill is paid, then ask for an
unlock, and cancel the line.

There's definitely more than AT&T has told all the news outlets, and you have
to call to get the details. Surprise, surprise - AT&T not totally forthcoming?
Who knew...

~~~
fbpcm
Can you just put your sim card into it and use it?

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fourspace
Well there goes the ~$100 premium I was able to fetch on Craigslist for my
last generation iPhones. Good news for AT&T consumers, though.

I wonder if this means they'll also unlock iPads since they were never under
contract?

~~~
sumukh1
Just a quick point: AT&T (GSM) iPads were always unlocked.

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g-garron
This is going to lower the price of unlocked phones in ebay and the like.
(used ones) Good news.

~~~
billpaetzke
I heard there was a difference between factory unlocked phones and phones
unlocked some time later (let's call them store unlocked phones). Such that
the factory unlocked would retain the unlock if you wiped/reset the phone (for
instance, to sell it to someone else), but the store unlocked phone would need
to be re-unlocked (because its factory settings are of being locked).

If someone could back me up or refute this, go ahead. For me, I just buy the
factory-unlocked phone straight from apple.com and don't have to deal with it.
(I go out of the country enough that it's worth it to me).

~~~
bshep
AFAIK the lock( or unlock ) status is stored in a special area of the baseband
and should survive updates/restores.

The best people to answer this is probably someone from the Dev-Team.

~~~
watmough
I believe the phone phones home to Apple to verify its unlock status, and this
is only known for the store unlocked ones.

Hence the 'Successfully unlocked' message when you restore an unlocked phone.

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thought_alarm
Locked hardware really has nothing to do with enforcing a fixed-term contract.
I think the day will come when Apple refuses to produce locked iPhones and
sells only unlocked devices to the carriers.

In many markets the carriers already do next to nothing to promote or sell the
iPhone, so there isn't much they can threaten to take away. And a carrier
isn't going to drop the iPhone as long as there's a competing carrier that's
willing to sell the iPhone.

~~~
_rs
Do carriers really need to advertise the iPhone considering the amount of
attention it already receives?

~~~
thought_alarm
That's the point.

The carriers don't have to promote any specific phone. The devices they
invariably do push are the ones that make them the most money per subscriber
per month, and contain features not found on competing carriers.

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xnt14
Does this apply to iPhones that were bought off contract? (From the Apple
Store.)

~~~
runjake
No. Those are already unlocked and will forever remain unlocked.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Not in the US. iPhones bought for full price from the Apple store in the US
were still locked to AT&T.

