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iPhone Unlock in UK - 10th November

RA19 said:
Ok, having heard nothing since filling in the O2 online unlock form on 10 Nov. I decided to phone O2 on 202 free service. The guy I spoke to said the following - because I changed my handset in July 09 to a 3GS one from the original 3G supplied with the contract a year earlier I am not eligible for an unlock!
He said I should contact the original owner of the 3GS (I bought it off eBay) to determine whether the phone I bought was a PAYG model or was bought on contract.
Apparently if you have a PAYG phone (my son paid the big bucks for one too in July, bought from O2 online) they will not allow you to unlock until you have had the iphone for a minimum of 12 months. In the case of 3GS handsets this is in July 2010.
He said this situation may change at some future point, but was the policy right now.

If anyone has any information contrary to this please post it here. Thanks.
:(
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Well, I re-submitted my unlock request on the O2 form on Monday & today I got the unlock text confirming I'm good to go!!
:D

(Not that I'm going anywhere just yet, but it's nice to have the option! lol)
 
daneoni said:
They finally unlocked my 3G S...

attachment.php
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Yay! Well done!

Glad you got it sorted eventually.
 
I'm using an Orange SIM in my unlocked 2G iPhone fine. Your SIM might have expired. When I got the O2 SIM I requested so I could unlock my phone it had a date on it that it had to be activated before.
 
I have heard nothing back yet.

When I bought my 3Gs on PAY&GO I sold my 3G on ebay with the new SIM that came with the 3GS. I used my old 3G SIM in my new phone so I could keep the same phone number.

Do you think the person with my old 3G is now unlocked? :(

I notice that on the unlock page it mentions about a £14 unlock fee. Is that new? I'm sure that was not there originally.
 
iHateMacs said:
I have heard nothing back yet.

When I bought my 3Gs on PAY&GO I sold my 3G on ebay with the new SIM that came with the 3GS. I used my old 3G SIM in my new phone so I could keep the same phone number.

Do you think the person with my old 3G is now unlocked? :(

I notice that on the unlock page it mentions about a £14 unlock fee. Is that new? I'm sure that was not there originally.
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If they now about iPhones being unlocked, then most likely.

As for the fee, I thought it was £10 for PAYG phones and free for contracts
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

The site has always said £14.69
 
iHateMacs said:
I have heard nothing back yet.

When I bought my 3Gs on PAY&GO I sold my 3G on ebay with the new SIM that came with the 3GS. I used my old 3G SIM in my new phone so I could keep the same phone number.

Do you think the person with my old 3G is now unlocked? :(

I notice that on the unlock page it mentions about a £14 unlock fee. Is that new? I'm sure that was not there originally.
Click to expand...

AFAIK they unlock by IMEI number; they only want a phone number to a) prove that you're an O2 customer, and b) to show whether you are on PAYG or contract. Hence I was able to unlock my second hand iPhone using the number of a new PAYG SIM I only requested a few days before (I generally use an Orange SIM).

As long as you gave them the phone number you have now, and you're current iPhone's IMEI number than you should be fine.

There has alwasy been a £14.69 charge for PAYG customers to unlock; for people with contracts it's free however.
 
Bungle73 said:
AFAIK they unlock by IMEI number; they only want a phone number to a) prove that you're an O2 customer, and b) to show whether you are on PAYG or contract. Hence I was able to unlock my second hand iPhone using the number of a new PAYG SIM I only requested a few days before (I generally use an Orange SIM).

As long as you gave them the phone number you have now, and you're current iPhone's IMEI number than you should be fine.

There has alwasy been a £14.69 charge for PAYG customers to unlock; for people with contracts it's free however.
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So I've been following this thread from the beginning and am thinking of trying this even though I don't need to unlock my phone. O2 only cares that you give them an IMEI number and a current O2 Pay monthly or PAYG number, right? So I live in the US and I have AT&T. My brother lives in London and his wife has O2. Can I have her fill out the form and use my IMEI? What other checks does O2 perform? If the IMEI has ever been used on their network? If it is a valid UK IMEI (I don't even know if they are sorted by country)? If they do check that the phone has been used with the associated SIM card, could I just use her SIM in my phone next time I visit (I can jailbreak) and then it would work? Lots of questions, I hope someone can answer a few of them.
 
danieljacobj said:
So I've been following this thread from the beginning and am thinking of trying this even though I don't need to unlock my phone. O2 only cares that you give them an IMEI number and a current O2 Pay monthly or PAYG number, right? So I live in the US and I have AT&T. My brother lives in London and his wife has O2. Can I have her fill out the form and use my IMEI? What other checks does O2 perform? If the IMEI has ever been used on their network? If it is a valid UK IMEI (I don't even know if they are sorted by country)? If they do check that the phone has been used with the associated SIM card, could I just use her SIM in my phone next time I visit (I can jailbreak) and then it would work? Lots of questions, I hope someone can answer a few of them.
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O2 state that for them to unlock an iPhone it must have been bought from them (or from the CW or Apple to use on O2). I assume they have some sort of record of the IMEI numbers of the phones that were bought for use with them?
 
I don't think anyone is going to 'know' the answer to your questions, we could only guess. I say go for it? Worst thing that can happen is O2 could say no, and all that would be would the standard text people have shown us on this forum. I would imagine O2 probably have a list of IMEIs they've sold. I would also guess they must enter these IMEIs into an Apple system somewhere that does then unlocking, and this system probably checks which Operator the IMEI is tied to, but again I don't think any of us would know this for sure?
 
Just adding my 2 cents in case anyone is in a similar situation. I bought a PAYG iPhone at the Apple store in Westfield in the middle of October. They activated it on the spot even though I was going to put my O2 contract sim in it. You get the free BT Openzone and Cloud internet and 12 months unlimited mobile internet with the activation. The BT/Cloud internet is tied to the phone while the mobile internet is tied to the sim. I put my contract sim in and, when 10 November rolled around, asked for the unlock. About 10 days later I got it unlocked for no charge. This was my first iPhone. I used my contract phone number and, obviously, my PAYG phone IMEI. I have about 2 months left on an 18 month contract and will use the PAYG sim and port my number after the contract is up.
 
jimmy83 said:
:confused:
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Orange PAYG SIMs don't often come pre-registered and ready to go. You have to call the 0800 number (if its unopened it should be there) and register it, unless the online system actually works these days. Until you do, it will not allow the SIM on the network (on other phones it would say SIM registration failed)

Bear in mind you'd get no 3G unless the SIM is a different colour (green when I last used them) and explicitly states that it is a 3G SIM.
 
What's the word?

danieljacobj said:
So I've been following this thread from the beginning and am thinking of trying this even though I don't need to unlock my phone. O2 only cares that you give them an IMEI number and a current O2 Pay monthly or PAYG number, right? So I live in the US and I have AT&T. My brother lives in London and his wife has O2. Can I have her fill out the form and use my IMEI? What other checks does O2 perform? If the IMEI has ever been used on their network? If it is a valid UK IMEI (I don't even know if they are sorted by country)? If they do check that the phone has been used with the associated SIM card, could I just use her SIM in my phone next time I visit (I can jailbreak) and then it would work? Lots of questions, I hope someone can answer a few of them.
Click to expand...

I agree you should try it and see what happens. There's lots of folks here that'd be very interested in the answer... and if your sister-in-law could do all our phones :p

Then again, it's easy for us to say since it's costing you the 15 pounds to try it.
 
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