So the UK iPhone users can legally unlock their iPhones, anything for us?

miralize

http://thenextweb.com/europe/2009/11/09/o2-unlocked-iphones-tomorrow/

O2 is to allow its iPhone customers in the UK to unlock their handset from tomorrow. 10 November is the day that sees O2’s two-year exclusivity deal with Apple come to an end. Rival network Orange is starting to sell iPhones from tomorrow and O2 obviously sees no reason to force customers to use their handset only on its own network any more

Seeing as Vodafone is coming along with the iPhone soon, shall we be seeing any similar programme?

aidan_walsh

Taken from Twitter earlier this evening:

miralize

Seems everything is happening Q1 of next year (tethering etc..). Does o2 not see that by restricting it now, they're giving every excuse to switch over??

slinky2000

interesting! should make getting an unlocked iphone alot easier now!

Dades

miralize wrote: »

Does o2 not see that by restricting it now, they're giving every excuse to switch over??

Surely if they unlocked now people would be jumping ship immediately - instead of hanging on with O2 until exclusivity ends?

What exactly have they to gain by unlocking people's phones? Good will doesn't pay the bills.

Jumpy

Dades wrote: »

Surely if they unlocked now people would be jumping ship immediately - instead of hanging on with O2 until exclusivity ends?

What exactly have they to gain by unlocking people's phones? Good will doesn't pay the bills.

Sales of the device.

People would buy them now even to use them on Vodafone as opposed to purchasing them from Vodafone when they have them.

seamus

Jumpy wrote: »

People would buy them now even to use them on Vodafone as opposed to purchasing them from Vodafone when they have them.

O2 don't make a lot of money from sales of the iPhone. The value is in the services in the case of PAYG.

Dades

^^ Indeed! ^^

People only bought them from O2 as they either had to use their network, or source an unlocked device with all the messing/costs that entails.

In fact the handset costs were heavily subsidised by O2 as their profit was always in contracting people.

G-Money

Any idea how this unlock might work? Do they send you some code to type into the phone?

Creamy Goodness

grandmaster wrote: »

Any idea how this unlock might work? Do they send you some code to type into the phone?

Everytime you sync your phone to iTunes your phones imei number is checked with a database to ensure your using the correct network. Unlocking you phone legitimately means your carrier gets apple to stop this check.

Jailbroken phones dupe this check into thinking it's checking in as an official carrier phone.

Mcloke

That would be great...I am happy with O2 at the moment but plan on going abroad for several weeks next year and would be great to be able to bring my iphone with me and pick up a PAYG sim card over there!
Hopefully this will work out

Gibs

Mcloke wrote: »

That would be great...I am happy with O2 at the moment but plan on going abroad for several weeks next year and would be great to be able to bring my iphone with me and pick up a PAYG sim card over there!
Hopefully this will work out

Not that I'm advocating it, but it is already possible to unlock an Irish iphone fairly easily.

Seems a shame to wait....:rolleyes: