Triple play on iPhone unlocking

Stephen Withers
Monday, 27 August 2007 05:59

Your IT - Mobility

Three separate projects have claimed success in unlocking the iPhone so it can be used with any GSM network, but AT&T may not be sitting back quietly.

George Hotz has published in his blog (with acknowledgements to others) a step-by-step method that requires soldering two wires to the iPhone's circuit board as a prerequisite to loading the device with patched firmware.

Hotz says he has traded the iPhone shown being unlocked for a Nissan 350Z after a failed attempt to sell on eBay. The (presumably) proud owner is Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell, a mobile phone parts and services provider. It would be cynical to suggest he's looking forward to plenty of business from owners who foul up the soldering needed for Hotz' method - we prefer to think he's simply rewarding the effort and enthusiasm of a young man in an area close to Daidone's heart.

iPhoneSimFree.com claimed to be set to release the "worlds first (and only) software driven sim unlocking service for the iPhone" this week.

The software has been demonstrated to Engadget, which confirmed that the unlock worked in that the iPhone worked with a T-Mobile SIM, and that it survived a full restore.

"Everything is confirmed as working on a non-AT&T network", said Engadget, with the proviso that YouTube had to be manually reactivated. Visual voicemail is delivered by the carrier, so there is no expectation that feature would be available on other networks.

The third player is iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UK-based phone unlocking company Uniquephones.

iphoneunlocking.com claimed to be within hours of releasing its "remote software unlocking services" when it received a phone call from a US law firm purportedly acting on behalf of AT&T.

"Until an assessment is made of the potential of legal action, Uniquephones is unable to release the unlocking software for sale," said a company spokesperson, who added that Uniquephones was considering its options if it was legally denied the right to sell it.

It seems that US law gives mobile phone owners the right to unlock their phones in order to use them with different carriers, but there is some question about the legality of charging for such a service or for tools to do the job. You might have thought that iphoneunlocking.com was subject to UK rather than US law in this regard, but there you go.