Service Question

[mr wrong]

I am an existing AT&T customer, and want a new cell phone. Please excuse me if this topic has already been discussed.

I am surrounded by Wi-Fi at home and work. I have no need for AT&T's data plan. Can I use my existing sim card in the iPhone- keeping my current calling plan, and still use the wi-fi capabilities of the iPhone?

Will any hacks, or work-arounds be necessary?

Again, sorry if this has already been discussed

Thanks.

[espanoliPod]

if you don't need the data, you could buy a cheap $10 gophone from at&t, activate it, switch your number into the gophone account, pick the minutes option thats best for you, put the gophone SIM into your iPhone, and sell/discard the gophone. This is just my suggestion, this is NOT what you have to do. I believe you have to get a $20 or more data plan if you do a regular iPhone activation on AT&T, but don't take my word for that, I am not 100% sure.

[Michael415]

I am an existing AT&T customer, and want a new cell phone. Please excuse me if this topic has already been discussed.

I am surrounded by Wi-Fi at home and work. I have no need for AT&T's data plan. Can I use my existing sim card in the iPhone- keeping my current calling plan, and still use the wi-fi capabilities of the iPhone?

Will any hacks, or work-arounds be necessary?

Again, sorry if this has already been discussed

Thanks.

Same boat as you, wifi pretty much everywhere. When I asked Att if it was possible to just keep my existing plan and buy the iphone they were very clear, NO. In fact even though my minutes plan didn't change they no longer would honor my national discount along with tacking on 20 for a small data plan.

[mr wrong]

OK so what exactly will happen if I install my existing AT&T sim card into the iPhone, and use the iphoneunlocktoolkit? Will I be able to use the phone and wi-fi?

[jhollington]

I'm not directly familiar with iphoneunlocktoolkit, but remember that there are two separate issues here....

Activating the iPhone (which is what I suspect that iPhoneunlocktoolkit does, despite the name), simply allows you to bypass the iTunes requirement that you sign up through AT&T, allowing you to instead use the phone as an iPod and WiFi device (you won't have access to any phone features using this method). There are a couple of dozen activation hacks available, and this method was discovered about three days after the iPhone's release.

Unlocking (or SIM unlocking) the iPhone requires a few more steps, most of which involve loading a special application onto the iPhone and running through some steps. Several GUI-based unlock tools have now become available that will do this for you in one fell swoop without too much end user expertise or knowledge required, but it's still an extra step.

Now, to use an AT&T non-iPhone SIM card is actually a bit easier, as the iPhone can inherently accept an AT&T SIM card as far as the hardware lock is concerned. The restriction on AT&T iPhone SIM cards is not a "SIM lock" per se, but rather an operating system level issue that can be worked around. There was a software hack released about six weeks ago that allowed reprogramming of the iPhone's OS to accept other AT&T (or even Cingular) SIM cards. You can probably find more information on sites like www.hackint0sh.org or www.hacktheiphone.net.