The Apple iPhone. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

The author is a Kingston, Ont.-based technology writer.

Apple Inc.'s new iPhone has been getting attention for many reasons, including one the company — and cellphone carriers — didn't particularly want discussed.

When the phone debuted under an exclusive service agreement with one U.S. mobile carrier — AT&T — it was only a matter of time until someone figured out how to unlock it to work with other wireless networks. And that has put a spotlight on the issue of locking and unlocking cellphones.

The iPhone isn't unique. Any cellphone can be locked so it will work only with one carrier's service, and most cellphones sold in Canada are locked. Any cellphone can also be unlocked — and while cellular companies disapprove, it's legal in most countries, including in Canada.

"It's a consumer's piece of property," says Michael Geist, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, "and I don't think there's any reason that copyright law or any other law would stop someone from unlocking a phone."

The only country where the legality of unlocking is murky is the United States, Geist says, because of that country's Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That law contains a provision against "picking digital locks" that might be read to prohibit phone unlocking — except that as of earlier this year cellphones were specifically exempted from the legislation, Geist notes.

In fact, says Amit Kaminer, an analyst at telecommunications research firm SeaBoard Group in Toronto, in some European countries the law requires carriers to offer unlocked cellphones.

In Canada, selling locked phones is standard practice. If you get your phone through Bell, Rogers, Telus or one of the smaller regional telephone companies, it will come locked to that carrier. But shops in every major city will unlock it for you, for a fee from $35 to about $150 depending on the phone.

Vic Handa runs one such shop, Cellspeed, in northeast Toronto. He has been unlocking cellphones, and selling new and refurbished unlocked phones, for about six years. In the past three years, he says, more and more consumers have become interested in liberating their handsets from specific wireless networks.

"Customers are getting more educated," Handa says.

Why would you unlock your phone? To save money while travelling outside Canada or so you can have the latest phones — such as the Apple iPhone — before carriers here start offering them.

Nature of the wireless network

Seventeen-year-old George Hotz, shown here in his bedroom workspace in Glen Rock, N.J., was among the first to figure out how to unlock an iPhone from T-Mobile's network. (Carmine Galasso/AP)

In practice, the issue is of most interest to Rogers Communications customers because of the nature of the Rogers wireless network.

Cellphone networks use two different and incompatible standards. Rogers, like most European carriers, uses a system called Global System for Mobile (GSM). Bell and Telus use Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), which is popular in the U.S.

GSM phones don't work on CDMA networks or vice versa — and, while some carriers outside North America use CDMA, Handa says, CDMA frequencies used here are different from those overseas.

CDMA phones can be unlocked, but it's more complicated than unlocking GSM phones and there's little to gain from it, Handa says. A phone sold by Bell could theoretically be unlocked and used on the Telus network, or vice versa, but the phones are identifiable by electronic codes and neither carrier will provide service to phones sold through the other. And an unlocked CDMA phone isn't much use overseas, since most other countries have GSM networks.

An unlocked GSM phone is a different matter. GSM phones use easily swapped Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards, which in principle means you can move your SIM card from one phone to another at will, or insert a new SIM card to use your phone with another carrier's service.

Carriers lock handsets to prevent this type of SIM card swapping. A spokesperson for Rogers says it's also common practice for Canadian carriers to lock phones because they heavily subsidize the cost of the handsets, and so that "carriers can ensure the quality of services, features [and] benefits offered to their customers over the network." Rogers didn't respond to a follow-up question about how locking ensures quality of service.

But once you unlock a GSM phone, Handa explains, you can save on roaming charges when travelling outside Canada.

In most European countries, carriers sell SIM cards with relatively inexpensive service plans allowing you to use any GSM phone without paying the often painful roaming charges — a couple of dollars a minute isn't unusual — you'll incur when making calls on your Canadian service when travelling in another country.

Even calling back to Canada from overseas can be substantially cheaper if you use a service based in the country you're calling from, he says.

Some people are also interested in unlocking so they can import hot new phones not yet available from Canadian carriers.

The prime example right now is the iPhone. You can't buy one in Canada today, but you can get one in the U.S., unlock it, drop in a Rogers SIM card and it will work, says Kaminer, who currently uses a U.S.-bought iPhone on the Rogers network.

You could do that by taking the SIM card out of the Rogers phone you already have, Kaminer says. Or you could simply buy a service plan — though they dislike phone unlocking, he says, Canadian carriers will sell service to people who have an unlocked phone.

The choice of service plans is likely to be more limited, though.

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