What does unlocking a phone mean?

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› See More: What does unlocking a phone mean?

o.k. each phone is lock to the service provider of that phone. let say cingular, you cannot put t-mobile sim card on that cingular phone, it only take cingular sim card. if you have unlock cell phone (gsm) you can put any sim card in 1 phone. u.s.a. you can put (at&t, t-mobile, cingular). canada (fido, microcell,roger) actually you can put any sim card there is in the world especially if you have tri-band phone the work all over the world. not applicable to (cdma and tdma phone) sprint and verizon.

When you buy a discounted phone from a carrier they will often lock the
phone to only work with their network. They do that because they
subsidized the price of the phone based on your promise to stay on their
service for some period of time. If you try to use the phone on another
network or with another SIM card it won't work. Unlocking, of course,
is undoing that so you can use the phone with any SIM or compatible
service. TMobile will unlock your phone after only 90 days of service.
If you plan on staying with one carrier and never leave the country
then it makes no difference. While I'm perfectly happy to stay on TMo
while in the US, I want to use prepaid cards in other countries that I
visit so I need an unlocked phone.

From:Jeff Johnson
[email protected]