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.
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.
I ended up selling my phone on eBay and purchasing an iPhone 3G from a friend which I unlocked by jail breaking it!
That part is not clear to me. At first sight, it seems to mean that the phone to be unlocked can't be currently associated with a working AT&T account. Meaning, if I use it right now, they won't unlock it even after my two-year contract is up.
If that's what it means, it sucks for people who want to unlock to use it abroad.
If your contract is up, you're fine.
> I think it is completely reasonable that they expect
> you to finish the contract you signed with them
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.
Wasn't the original iPhone (at release) $600 with contract?
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.
I believe it was only after the next model came out that they started paying subsidies to ATT. That was how they got the price to 299 and 199.
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.
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+.
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...
I wonder if this means they'll also unlock iPads since they were never under contract?
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).
Part of that activation process involves getting a token back that instructs the phone how it should be locked, or not at all.
The unlock process that AT&T (and every other iPhone carrier) does is that they instruct Apple to update the record on their activation server to say your phone should be getting a "fully unlocked" response. Next time you tether the phone to iTunes it checks the activation token and unlocks the phone.
The best people to answer this is probably someone from the Dev-Team.
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.
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.