A 17-year-old New Jersey hacker has broken the coded lock that marries Apple's iPhone to AT&T's wireless network.
EPA/ARLEEN NG
The act has opened the floodgates for others to dump AT&T and use other carriers, including overseas ones.
The AP reports George Hotz of Glen Rock, N.J., confirmed Friday that he had unlocked an iPhone and was using it on T-Mobile's network, the only major U.S. carrier apart from AT&T that is compatible with the iPhone's cellular technology. In a video posted to his blog, he holds an iPhone that displays 'T-Mobile' as the carrier.
The possiblitities to switch AT&T to T-Mobile may not be a major development for U.S. consumers, but the AP reports it opens up the iPhone for use on the networks of overseas carriers.
"That's the big thing," said Hotz, in a phone interview with the AP from his home.
The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, currently is sold only in the U.S.
No official word yet from Apple or AT&T.
The college bound Hotz posted the instructions on Thursday to his blog, the AP reports it is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software.
It takes him about two hours to perform. Since the details are public, it seems likely that a small industry may spring up to buy U.S. iPhones, unlock them and send them overseas.
"That's exactly, like, what I don't want," Hotz said to the AP. "I don't want people making money off this."
He said he wished he could make the instructions simpler, so users could modify the phones themselves.
"But that's the simplest I could make them," Hotz said. The next step, he said, would be for someone to develop a way to unlock the phone using only software.
The iPhone has already been made to work on overseas networks using another method, which involves copying information from the SIM card.
Apple, according to the AP, "may be able to modify the iPhone production line to make new phones invulnerable. The company has said it plans to introduce the phone in Europe this year, but it hasn't set a date or identified carriers."
There is no U.S. law against unlocking cell phones.
According to the AP Hotz collaborated online with four other people, two of them in Russia, to develop the unlocking process.
"Then there are two guys who I think are somewhere U.S.-side," Hotz said. He knows them only by their online handles.
Hotz himself spent about 500 hours on the project since the iPhone went on sale on June 29. On Thursday, he put the unlocked iPhone up for sale on eBay, where the high bid was above $2,000 midday Friday. The model, with 4 gigabytes of memory, sells for $499 new.
"Some of my friends think I wasted my summer but I think it was worth it," he told The Record of Bergen County, which reported Hotz's hack Friday.
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