George Hotz, 17, says he has unlocked two Apple iPhones and is using one with T-Mobile service.By BRAD STONE
AT&T is paying millions to be the exclusive United States provider of Apple’s much-hyped and glowingly reviewed gadget, the iPhone.
It took 17-year-old George Hotz two months of work to undermine AT&T’s investment.
Mr. Hotz, a resident of Glen Rock, N.J., published detailed instructions online this week that he says will let iPhone owners abandon AT&T’s service and use their phones on some competing cellular networks.
Mr. Hotz’s method, which requires a soldering gun, a steady hand and a set of obscure software tools, is one of several techniques that have emerged over the last week to break the technological locks confining the iPhone to AT&T’s network.
“This was about opening up the device for everyone,” Mr. Hotz said in an interview over his iPhone, which he was using on the network of T-Mobile, a rival to AT&T.
Carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint seek to keep their customers in two ways. They force them to sign multiyear contracts, which are expensive to break. And the carriers put complex technological locks on phones to ensure that they run only on a given carrier’s wireless network. Without the locks, the phones could be used on rival networks that use the same underlying technology.
People who work on unlocking cellphones say those technical locks unfairly restrict customer choice. They want to give cellphone users the flexibility to take their phones with them overseas without incurring heavy roaming fees, or to transfer the devices to other networks once a user’s service contract has expired.
Mr. Hotz says it took him about 500 hours to unlock two iPhone units. He put one of them up for sale on eBay, and by late yesterday, bids on the phone had reached many thousands of dollars. An unmodified iPhone sells for $499 at an Apple store.
His technique is probably not accessible to most people. But Mr. Hotz described it in detail on his Web site in the hopes that others could simplify the procedure.
Neither Apple nor AT&T would comment on Mr. Hotz’s handiwork or on another unlocking technique revealed yesterday by an anonymous group calling itself iPhoneSimFree.
Members of that group demonstrated their technique to a writer for the Web site Engadget. They said they had developed a way to unlock iPhones with a software update, without any hardware changes to the device.
IPhone owners presumably would be able to run that software and then insert another carrier’s SIM card, the small card inside phones that run on G.S.M. networks. A SIM card stores information about the subscriber.
The writer for Engadget verified that the iPhoneSimFree technique worked. Apparently only one feature, AT&T’s visual voice mail system, which lets users retrieve voice mail in whatever order they choose, stopped working when an iPhone was removed from the AT&T system.
The six-man iPhoneSimFree group says that it has been working on unlocking the iPhone since June and that it plans to start selling its software to parties that want to unlock large numbers of iPhones.
The members have not disclosed what they intend to charge, and they declined to reveal their identities.
“We’re a bit paranoid about privacy because we don’t know how things are going to evolve,” said one group member, who identified himself only as Jim in a brief phone interview.
His caution stems from the murky legal status of unlocking cellphones.
Last fall, the Librarian of Congress issued an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ruling that people can legally unlock their cellphones. But the ruling does not specifically apply to people like Mr. Hotz and the iPhoneSimFree group who distribute the unlocking tools.
Apple and AT&T could conceivably sue such distributors under the copyright act. The companies could also argue that people sharing modifications to iPhones are interfering with a business relationship, between Apple and AT&T and the customers.
Apple might also seek to block the unlocking tools with its regular software updates to the iPhone. Mr. Hotz says he thinks his unlocking process is immune to such changes, because he is making a change to the device’s read-only memory, which cannot be changed with a software patch.
One other approach to unlocking the iPhone has made some waves recently.
Two weeks ago, a company called Bladox, based in the Czech Republic, began selling an $80 device called a Turbo SIM. The thumbnail-size card, attached to another carrier’s SIM card and inserted into an iPhone, tricks the iPhone into thinking it is running on the AT&T network even when it is not.
The company has reportedly been overwhelmed by orders and is not selling the product on its site. But Jesús Díaz, a technology writer in Madrid, said he bought the Turbo SIM last week and was now using his iPhone on Spain’s Vodafone network.
“Everyone here asks me: ‘What is that? Can I see it, can I touch it?’ ” said Mr. Díaz, whose iPhone draws a lot of attention because Apple has not yet announced a deal to sell the device in Europe.
The iPhone unlocking craze may have reverberations beyond Apple and AT&T.
Cellphone carriers in the United States generally subsidize the initial purchase of a phone and then work to keep customers paying the lucrative monthly fees. That is why operators offer incentives for loyalty and require long contracts.
But people now want the same freedom with their cellphones that they have with other devices, like televisions and computers.
Mike McGuire, an analyst at the research firm Gartner, says that even though few consumers will try these sophisticated alterations, the iPhone modifications point to “the rather rapid erosion of the carrier control of handset distribution.”
“This has been going on for a while,” he said, “and this is the latest salvo.”
It took 17-year-old George Hotz two months of work to undermine AT&T’s investment.
Mr. Hotz, a resident of Glen Rock, N.J., published detailed instructions online this week that he says will let iPhone owners abandon AT&T’s service and use their phones on some competing cellular networks.
Mr. Hotz’s method, which requires a soldering gun, a steady hand and a set of obscure software tools, is one of several techniques that have emerged over the last week to break the technological locks confining the iPhone to AT&T’s network.
“This was about opening up the device for everyone,” Mr. Hotz said in an interview over his iPhone, which he was using on the network of T-Mobile, a rival to AT&T.
Carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint seek to keep their customers in two ways. They force them to sign multiyear contracts, which are expensive to break. And the carriers put complex technological locks on phones to ensure that they run only on a given carrier’s wireless network. Without the locks, the phones could be used on rival networks that use the same underlying technology.
People who work on unlocking cellphones say those technical locks unfairly restrict customer choice. They want to give cellphone users the flexibility to take their phones with them overseas without incurring heavy roaming fees, or to transfer the devices to other networks once a user’s service contract has expired.
Mr. Hotz says it took him about 500 hours to unlock two iPhone units. He put one of them up for sale on eBay, and by late yesterday, bids on the phone had reached many thousands of dollars. An unmodified iPhone sells for $499 at an Apple store.
His technique is probably not accessible to most people. But Mr. Hotz described it in detail on his Web site in the hopes that others could simplify the procedure.
Neither Apple nor AT&T would comment on Mr. Hotz’s handiwork or on another unlocking technique revealed yesterday by an anonymous group calling itself iPhoneSimFree.
Members of that group demonstrated their technique to a writer for the Web site Engadget. They said they had developed a way to unlock iPhones with a software update, without any hardware changes to the device.
IPhone owners presumably would be able to run that software and then insert another carrier’s SIM card, the small card inside phones that run on G.S.M. networks. A SIM card stores information about the subscriber.
The writer for Engadget verified that the iPhoneSimFree technique worked. Apparently only one feature, AT&T’s visual voice mail system, which lets users retrieve voice mail in whatever order they choose, stopped working when an iPhone was removed from the AT&T system.
The six-man iPhoneSimFree group says that it has been working on unlocking the iPhone since June and that it plans to start selling its software to parties that want to unlock large numbers of iPhones.
The members have not disclosed what they intend to charge, and they declined to reveal their identities.
“We’re a bit paranoid about privacy because we don’t know how things are going to evolve,” said one group member, who identified himself only as Jim in a brief phone interview.
His caution stems from the murky legal status of unlocking cellphones.
Last fall, the Librarian of Congress issued an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ruling that people can legally unlock their cellphones. But the ruling does not specifically apply to people like Mr. Hotz and the iPhoneSimFree group who distribute the unlocking tools.
Apple and AT&T could conceivably sue such distributors under the copyright act. The companies could also argue that people sharing modifications to iPhones are interfering with a business relationship, between Apple and AT&T and the customers.
Apple might also seek to block the unlocking tools with its regular software updates to the iPhone. Mr. Hotz says he thinks his unlocking process is immune to such changes, because he is making a change to the device’s read-only memory, which cannot be changed with a software patch.
One other approach to unlocking the iPhone has made some waves recently.
Two weeks ago, a company called Bladox, based in the Czech Republic, began selling an $80 device called a Turbo SIM. The thumbnail-size card, attached to another carrier’s SIM card and inserted into an iPhone, tricks the iPhone into thinking it is running on the AT&T network even when it is not.
The company has reportedly been overwhelmed by orders and is not selling the product on its site. But Jesús Díaz, a technology writer in Madrid, said he bought the Turbo SIM last week and was now using his iPhone on Spain’s Vodafone network.
“Everyone here asks me: ‘What is that? Can I see it, can I touch it?’ ” said Mr. Díaz, whose iPhone draws a lot of attention because Apple has not yet announced a deal to sell the device in Europe.
The iPhone unlocking craze may have reverberations beyond Apple and AT&T.
Cellphone carriers in the United States generally subsidize the initial purchase of a phone and then work to keep customers paying the lucrative monthly fees. That is why operators offer incentives for loyalty and require long contracts.
But people now want the same freedom with their cellphones that they have with other devices, like televisions and computers.
Mike McGuire, an analyst at the research firm Gartner, says that even though few consumers will try these sophisticated alterations, the iPhone modifications point to “the rather rapid erosion of the carrier control of handset distribution.”
“This has been going on for a while,” he said, “and this is the latest salvo.”
