Update needed I feel. What I did was ask them to change my USIM number on my contract to that of the AT&T prepaid card (must be a new one with 20 digits).

The iPhone seems to check and confim that it is indeed an AT&T sim (no idea how, i guess thats what the hackers are working on), but the network picks up that sims USIM number (not phone number) as my vodafone contract.

Not perfect without Visual Voicemail, but it works just fine.

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Although not to be too sticky you won't be able to buy an O2 XDA at a vodafone store ! They are only available through the O2 network and O2 stores.

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Hmmm, wonder if they could do such things in store here in Belgium as well, or on any other network... Would love to get an iPhone and with the non-simlock law here I doubt Apple will be inclined to start selling one here.

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Why did they reprogram the AT&T SIM? Why didn't they just provide one of their own and say "here, put this one in instead"? This is what confuses me most, as I've never really seen a carrier that would do that.. SIMs aren't expensive, and it seems like it'd cause more problems for them to try and reprogram random SIMs from foreign lands (in this case, the UK) when they could just reach into a drawer and give them one with a nice colourful Vodafone logo.

This may be a great way to "unlock" the iPhone if it is true, but right now I'm somewhat skeptical.. it sounds so weird for them to do that!

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Yeah, they need to reword the post. I got the idea because I had previously used an o2XDA with o2 sim with my vodafone contract by binding the o2 sim to my contract via the USIM number. No hacking needed!

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to SuitCase - there was no reprograming involved.

If they did just get a new sim out of the draw - it would not work now would it, because the sim knows it's a vodafone one. All sims do is hold info about the brand, type and store phone numbers and stuff... which is why my methord works...

The phone checks and confirms it's an AT&T sim. The reason it works is that vodafone picks it up and knows that that sim card is my contract and my number.

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sorry but i think this post needs rewriting or clarification from the source, too confusing

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AJ - Thanks for the reply. You should visit #iphone, we're all talking about you!

I understand now that the SIM was not reprogrammed, but I remain confused as to why Vodafone chose to take the ID of the SIM and add it to your contract rather than just saying "Oh, here's a new one, put it in your phone and go." Why would they bother to re-use the AT&T SIM? It seems uncharacteristic and weird for a company to do that, and I'm not entirely sure I could rely on my (Australian) carrier to do that for me. Do you think you were lucky to get the AT&T SIM repurposed by Vodafone, or does it seem somewhat normal?

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That's not possible.

Part of the USIM number as you name it, is the country and operator code. How on earth can Vodafone "capture" this number and assign it to Vodafone in UK when the serial number says it's AT&T in the USA?

Besides, the operator systems have limitations and won't allow to use a SIM card out of that operator's range: even within the same operator there are different serial number ranges and a sim card from, say, range A cannot be replaced by a sim card from range B.

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SuitCase - 100% lucky. If you get a arsehole on the front desk at the store, they wont help you because they dont want it to work and have authority issues. But lucky for me, the vodafone store guys i talked to are as excited to see the iphone working on their network as I was. It's simple, I saw the dude do it. Take down my phone number, do a few security checks to make sure I'm who I say I am, then edit the details of my account.

Phone turns on. Sim gives iPhone no problems (as it's AT&T) Network picks it up. Simple.

Im sure this will work with any other phone locked phone, as like i said, i did it before with my XDA that was locked to o2 when I first had my contract with vodafone. I wanted to keep the phone, so they used the o2 sim.

I'll try and take some pics and visit you guys as soon as i work out what #iphone is! Or someone else could do the same and take pics. Whatever. I just wanted to share the news. It's very very simple when you think about it. And best of all, no hacking. Even a simpleton can ask their network to change the USIM number on their contract to a new one.

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DIDN'T GET IT!

Okay here is a question:

Could the iPhone work in a country where the carrier does not lock its own cellphones ?

I live in a country that has one and only carrier. Their business model is not being subsidized by phone purchases (you buy the contract and the phone on separate contracts).

Now can someone explain a step-by-step method for dummies to get this damn iBendforATT work for my carrier ? (BTW my carrier has roaming partnerships with ATT on GSM, EDGE, and 3G)...

Thaaaaanks!

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Josh - I'm not a tech guy. So i dont have answers to headache worthy questions, but I asume that even tho it's a got a USA number or whatever, its just like a AT&T phone roaming over here.

I was told it only works because I got a new sim with 20 digits. It's got a little 3g logo on it, which i find funny seeing as i can't even get 2.5g on this thing!

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I work in the UK for a company linked to Vodafone and O2. I find it hard to believe that a mobile number an be provisioned onto another operators sim card.

Sim card numbers have a specific number range for each operator such as O2 in the UK start 8944.

The systems I work on typically only allow the users to perform a connection or sim change where by they enter the last 9 digits of the sim card hence you can only provision to a sim card in the same number range (and same network).

I'm not saying this is impossible just not a common exploit that could be used on all operators.

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H. Bennis -

iPhone NEEDS an AT&T sim. my methord probally would work with a contract sim. who knows. but i used a prepay.

1 network or 800 in a country, you will still get the same result.

The trick is to get the phone happy thats it's an AT&T sim. and the network to use the same sim for your uk contract/number.

Can someone else in the UK please try this out... I'm tired of this already. I just wanted to share my super-simple methord.

This would work with any locked phone even if the iphone never existed.

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Austin_yeahbaby - intresting stuff. I guess voda staff can just enter any USIM number with no error checking.

But have you even tried signing up a customer to voda and typing in a o2 USIM number?

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One thing I dont understand is that here in Ireland I thought the UK also we have SIM cards that only have 19 numbers where as the AT&T SIM has twenty??

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Just tried to get Rogers to activate an AT&T SIM on their network. They said no, as I suspected. FWIW, Rogers network prefix is 8930. Back to square one.

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AJ -

Okay, so what can I go say to my carrier with my local, ATT SIM, and iPhone ??

Can you please word it in a way that I can explain and the dudes behind the counter of my stupid carrier can understand, say in a 5 y/o words.

You might just save the world from this mess of unlocking THE iPhone...you'll be famous, LOL.

Tx,

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The 3 and 4th digit of an USIM/SIMs number are the country code. The AT&T USIM/SIMs will start with 8901 where 01 is the Country code.
UK is 8944, CH is 8941, etc. It is highly unlikely an operator will do this. Even if you find an employee willing to, the system will stop him.
If of course Vodafone allows this through (which again I highly doubt), technically it can work as the phone number is not on the SIM (well it is, but not the part that is relevant for network connectivity)

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