AT&T required to provide unlock codes, except iPhone

29th May, 2010 by adina
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AT&T has reached a settlement following a lawsuit related to phone lock-in. To avoid a court verdict, the carrier is required to provide unlock codes for all the phones of any subscribing customer who has had the service in place and has been paying for it during at least ninety days. The deal is also valid for prepaid users who can provide evidence of having bought the phone, as well as for those customers whose phones are part of an AT&T exclusive lasting ten months or less.

However, the deal does not require unlock codes for longer exclusives and thus rules out all the iPhones. It is not clear whether AT&T wanted to exclude the iPhone deliberately or simply tried to protect long-term exclusive deals as a whole, as in the case of the original BlackBerry Bold.

Technically, Apple has the tools to permit unlocking and it was required to do it in Germany. However, it has never offered this option unless it was legally stated to make this action possible. Otherwise, most phones are officially sold unlocked, like in France for example.


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