The iPhone has been locked to O2 since they first launched the device, but now the device is available from other networks (currently only Orange, but it will be available on Vodafone in the New Year too), O2 are now offering people the ability to unlock their iPhone.

If you are a Pay Monthly customer, then the unlock is free, and can occur at any time during the contract; you will still have to continue making the monthly payments until the end of the contract (and it’s not clear whether or not O2 will let you port the number away from O2 during this contract period), but O2 will unlock your iPhone for free.

If you are a PAYG customer (and many iPhone 3GS were bought like this, as it proved an efficient way of getting the iPhone upgrade before the customer’s iPhone 3G contract term was up) then it’s a bit more complicated.  Firstly, you need to have had the iPhone for over 12 months, and it will cost £14.69, so you need enough credit for that too.  Also, if the iPhone 3GS was registered with the PAYG SIM, you’ll need that number to perform the unlocking, as that’s the number linked to the phone sale.

If the phone was bought from an O2 store, Carphone Warehouse, or Apple UK, you should have no problems getting your iPhone unlocked; from any other source, and you will have to speak to the company you bought it from to sort out the unlock; ebay sales may run into problem unless you have the original SIM and number used to originally register the iPhone.

You need to complete an unlocking form, and the process can take upto 14 days, and to complete the process once you have entered the code O2 supply, you’ll need to have a non-O2 SIM to place in the iPhone, and then connect to iTunes via a USB cable to get the final confirmation message.

It’s nice to see O2 offering this service, although it’s a shame that due to the subsidies, PAYG customers have to wait 12 months (whereas other networks with less subsidised phones can often provide the unlock code within hours of first registering the phone), and for those who find their iPhone is linked to a SIM they don’t have or can’t find may have problems unlocking at all.

For more information, head over to the iPhone unlocking webpage at O2.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 9:57 am and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.