What Is 'unlocking?'

TonyB

As previously admitted when it comes to phone technology I am a dinasour!
However I guess one of you nice guys out there can brief me in the science of unlocking etc etc or at least point me in the direction of further advice as I have no idea what you are all talking about.
I have 2 payg phones one in each car (1 for each foot!!!!) really for emergency use only, a Motorola & a recently acquired Siemens.
I can't see unlocking will affect me but for future reference & not looking a 100% prat at pub discussions the info might help !!!

Thanks in advance, Tony.

Karnam

Look on your phone. If you bought it with a SIM card then it will be branded with "Orange" or "Tmobile" etc etc. This means that only SIMs from this network will work in the phone.

Unlocking is doing something to the phone (I've no idea how they do this though) which means that it will take ANY SIM card from ANY network. It makes phones more 'saleable'

ianonline

check out Martin's article here :

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1124214048,51164,

Browntoa

The Networks lock the phones to their Network as they subsidise the price of the phones to get customers. Unlocking removes that "lock" from the phone to allow you to (legally) put another networks sim in the phone.

Even on a contract this is legal , as long as you complete paying for your contract the phone is yours to do with from the moment you get it, so it is perfectly legal to sell a new upgrade phone and leave the sim in your old phone ...your contract is on the sim card ! (if you read the small print it says the sim remains the property of the netwrok for the duration of the contract)

almost all Nokias can be unlocked by free codes apart from 2 or 3 brand new models, almost all other model phones can be unlocked in a shop or market stall with the right equipment for about £10-20