A call to AT&T by tuaw.com to have their iPhone unlocked came up with zilch.
Phones on the AT&T network are eligible for unlocking, if you have paid the full retail price and have been a customer in good standing for 90 consecutive days.
Unless you have the iPhone.
AT&T's website states, "iPhone cannot be unlocked, even if you are out of contract. If you are traveling internationally, iPhone is a quad-band phone and will work in many countries across the globe. Stay connected while traveling to over 190 countries, plus get discounted rates in over 80 of those countries when you sign up for AT&T World Traveler"
This is a contradiction from an earlier statement by AT&T senior executive vice president, Jim Cicconi, in a USA Today article. "Once a contract has been fulfilled, Cicconi says AT&T will 'gladly unlock' a customer's phone, if requested."
Tuaw.com and the helpful support representative they spoke with, recommend calling the FCC (1-888-CALL-FCC) to complain about the situation.
Chris
September 28, 2007 at 2:23pm
since it has only been 90 days, how about pre paying the remainder of your 2 year contract then asking for an unlock. At that point you would have fulfilled your contractual obligations as Cicconi says, then AT&T should 'gladly unlock' your phone. Failure on the part of AT&T to unlock the phone at that point may be in violation of many state laws that require this.
Anonymous
November 09, 2007 at 8:22pm
You can't do that because there's no guaranteed estimation on how much your bill is going to be. You have to take into account the several different federal and local taxes, fees, and surcharges. They seem to change on a regular basis and your bill can go up or down. You also have to take into account that AT&T and other cell phone companies make most of their money on overage charges, and therefore there's no guarantee on if you're going to go over your bill or not and I bet AT&T won't take your word for it either. So the bottom line is, even if you pay for 2 years up front, you will just have a credit to your account in that amount and every month that credit will be reduced by the amount of the bill. I hope that answered that question for you, I am a former cingular/AT&T employee.
