AT&T won't unlock my 2-year-old iPhone

I purchased my iPhone on July 6th 2007 (immediately after stepping off the plane from Japan), and at the time, I cancelled my phone service with T-Mobile and started service with AT&T. Part of the terms and conditions of going with my iPhone on AT&T was that I had to agree to a 2-year contract, even though I paid the full price for the phone ($599, for those that don't remember how much a new iPhone used to cost). Whelp, earlier this week, my contract with AT&T officially expired. So today I decided that I'd give them a call, and see if they would unlock my phone.

After a short wait, I was speaking with a helpful AT&T support representative. After she confirmed that my account is in good standing, and that my contract has indeed expired, she told me that she could not unlock my phone. Her claim was that is due to an Apple policy:

"This is the only phone that we won't unlock — because Apple won't release the [unlock] code" — AT&T representative

My helpful AT&T representative offered to transfer me to Apple's AppleCare division, so that I could get some more clarity on this issue. And after not too long of a wait, I had both AT&T and Apple on the phone. The AppleCare representative indicated that Apple was indeed not allowing unlocks of iPhones purchased in the United States (this isn't the case for iPhones purchased in other countries). According to AppleCare, the reason to unlock iPhone is to use it with a different carrier, and Apple doesn't support any carrier other than AT&T in the US. When I dug deeper into this, I was told that there is no way to waive Apple support and have Apple unlock the phone.

Interestingly, the Applecare person knows full-well about people hacking their phones to unlock, and even implied that that was the way forward for me. But because I want to do things the "right" way, I pressed forward, and had Applecare escalate me to a product specialist within Apple.

While waiting on hold for the product specialist, the AT&T support representative dropped off the call. It was a fairly long wait, and unfortunately, the call dropped off while I was waiting. Ug! I was mucking around on Apple's support web pages trying to figure out how to call back, when my phone rang -- it was the Applecare person I had been working with calling me back! That is impressive.

I was now on with the Apple product specialist, and the story changed slightly. I was told that whether a phone is unlocked or not is always controlled by the carrier. The product specialist said that AT&T is not correct to claim that Apple is blocking iPhone unlocking in the US. He also said that the manufacturer doesn't have the unlock codes - those come from the carrier. Then I got the same spiel - that AT&T is the only authorized carrier for the iPhone in the United States, and Apple doesn't support any other carrier or unlocking in the US. Curiously, this Apple person also mentioned the existence of unlocking / hacking software. Finally, he said that I can use my iPhone as an iPod Touch if I keep the deactivated SIM card in it.

So at this point, I'm basically stuck. It seems like AT&T is the blocker, but I'm not sure if it's worth calling back and going up the chain of command there. I did a bit of digging on the Internet, and found that I can't be sued if I do unlock my phone. Going further, I found that I should have consulted Wikipedia first: according to that page, there is no law in the US that compels carries to unlock a phone once the subscriber is out of contract. Wikipedia also helpfully linked to this AT&T support article, which claims that the iPhone cannot be unlocked.

So, it seems that if I truly want my phone unlocked, I'm going to have to hack it. But what is still bothering me about all of this is that I don't know why. I mean, my phone is fully paid for, so why won't AT&T and Apple not allow my phone to be unlocked without forcing me to resort to hackery? In the meantime, I have filed a complaint with the FCC, the full text of which is after the break. I don't expect anything to come of it, but the FCC is investigating carrier-exclusive deals, so maybe my complaint will serve as another data point in their case.

The text of my complaint to the FCC:

I purchased an iPhone from Apple on July 6th, 2007, for the unsubsidized price of $599. I then activated my iPhone by starting new service with AT&T. At that time, I agreed to a 2-year contract with AT&T. As of this week, my contract with AT&T has been fulfilled, and my account is in good standing. I wish to have my phone unlocked, so that I can use it with a different carrier if I so choose.

Unfortunately, when I called AT&T today, they claimed that it was not possible to unlock my phone. The AT&T representative that I spoke with claimed that this was due to an Apple policy, and transferred me to an Apple representative. After speaking with two people at Apple, I learned that the decision to bar unlocking was set by AT&T, not Apple.

The fact that I cannot legally get my iPhone due to AT&T policy is extremely disappointing. My phone is fully paid for, and I have fulfilled the terms of my contract. If I cannot have the phone unlocked, than how can I consider this to be "my" phone?

Interestingly, FCC complaints filed over the Internet are limited to 1,000 characters. It took a fair amount of editing in my text editor in order to get my complaint under the limit. ;)

-Andy.