[quote author=“Tommo_UK”]On a plus note, you should have seen the store managers go ape over the iPhone when I showed them. To a man they were all blown away by it. They all thought other phones had similar specs and weren’t sure how special the iPhone was going to be, but it was great hearing them say stuff like “it blows away the Nokia N95,” and my favourite of all “This is freakin’ sick… that LG Prada phone is a piece of $hit compared to this.”

It’s a reminder that even those “in the trade” have no idea of iPhone’s significance. Partly on account of journalists’ feeble reporting and analysis. Prada is not worthy to be mentioned in the same article as iPhone!

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”]This is total BS by the way..I"v e talked to the network experts at O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and this just isn’t possible.. there’s no way this guy is for real. You cannot activate a non-UK SIM card on a UK network - the networks’ own systems will simply not allow you to enter a SIM number beginning with anything other than 8944 (all US codes start with 8901). I’ve been in the stores themselves and seen how the system works.

Shame, sad, but true.

Tommo, did you catch the nuance in what AJ tried? It looks like the key is not “porting” the SIM but “associating” the SIM with your contract. I may be reading too much into this but there may be something here according to more comments at Tuaw.com .

This “Wil Harris” had no luck with “moving” the SIM to Vodafone.

43. I just went to three different Vodafone stores and an O2 store. All of them said this is not possible.

It IS possible to move a SIM-locked phone to Vodafone without changing the SIM card - but only a UK one. UK phone providers are all obligated to provide PAC codes to customers who ask for them - the codes which unlock the SIM’s data for the SIM to be repurposed.

However, all the stores said that obtaining a PAC code for a US phone was not possible and that, without this code, the SIM would be stuck on AT&T and hence useless. Simply typing the USIM code into their system wouldn’t achieve anything, they said.

Now it’s quite possible that these guys are all goons and that simply entering the USIM number into the system is a leet hack that they have no idea about. But I haven’t managed to persuade anyone to actually try it yet, even when I reveal that I’m trying to get an iPhone working.

So I’m not ready to call shens on this, because it could just be a fluke - but I’m not holding out much hope for reproduction.

Posted at 7:20AM on Jul 20th 2007 by Wil Harris

But, “Stefan” points out a nuance to the approach, that may make a difference. You must associate not port the SIM.

47. If I remember correctly, certain Vodafone contracts (and O2, T-Mobile and Orange) allow you to add multiple phones to your contract while the phones use their own numbers.

And if I remember correctly, certain systems allow service staff to manually specify the USIM to associated with a phone number (that’s how you keep your number even if your SIM card is rendered unusable - your replacement SIM card number is associated with your number via software). Since the phone number is not stored on the SIM, but rather in the Home Location Register (HLR), which is held at the network provider, it is quite possible that a failure by the network provider software to verify that the USIM number is appropriate for the network (and country code) has allowed the HLR to associate that USIM number with the mobile number originally on the contract.

Considering Vodafone Greece’s problems with wiretapping before the Greek Olympic Games, I would not be surprised that other bugs in the HLR or service software at the POS terminal have allowed this to happen. It’s a cute trick. Perhaps I should try it too…

Posted at 9:18AM on Jul 20th 2007 by Stefan

48. Wil Harris, it’s not moving the number from one provider to the next (which requires a PAC), but associating a USIM number with a phone number that’s made this possible.

Posted at 9:21AM on Jul 20th 2007 by Stefan

And “Undermine” gives the loophole that I suspect is involved.

49. I can see a loophole that would allow this to work but it would require Vodafone subsiduries such as Verizon Wireless in the US and Vodafone UK using a single core application or application library.

The loophole would be that the software allows a USIM containing the country codes for any country that Vodafone has a subsidury in without checking the rest of the prefix matches a Vodofone subsidury company.

My guess is this might be a side effect related to Vodafones cheaper international roaming charges for countries in which it has subsiduraries. I would be interested in knowing if the phone worked abroad as that would indicate that the international system has accepted the fix rather than just the UK network.

If this guess is correct this would be a Vodafone and subsiduary specific fix and not a general fix.

Hope it helps

UnderMine

Posted at 10:21AM on Jul 20th 2007 by UnderMine

But you would think backoffice IT would know about this, even if you didn’t explain it exactly, and then again you may have explained exactly what AJ did.

In guess I expect this to work because it is more like how CDMA works, and CDMA is what I have. Verizon will attempt to add any CDMA ESN to your account and see if it will work, while Sprint (by policy) will not attempt to add any CDMA ESN that was not originally assigned to Sprint.

Of course, you’d think someone would have had success by now, so you may be right that this is bogus. 2 cents

I still think its bogus - I’ve tried again with T-Mobile and Vodafone using various approaches. No joy.