14 DAY TRIAL // A great number of hackers have put their minds to making the iPhone available for people without having to subscribe for a two-year contract with AT&T. People who are not fond of the services provided by this carrier have been the ones most supportive for such attempts, despite their risks presented for the handset.
Hacker Jon Lech Johansen posted some while ago on his blog a solution for activating the iPhone without AT&T support. He used the Phone Activation Server v1.0 program in order to unlock the iPhone. That came with several disadvantages too, but proved to be only a preliminary state, as a new result has just been achieved. In that case, the handset could be used only for iPod and WiFi use. In other terms, the iPhone owner had paid for a huge iPod if choosing to use a carrier other than AT&T.
The iPhone Dev Wiki hackers have managed to come up with several other solutions for unlocking the iPhone. One of them uses an application called iASign and seems to be the closest to what handset users are aiming for. In this case, the device will work with any existing Cingular/AT&T Pre-paid/MVNA SIM card. This means that it will not work with support from other companies, but will do so with older ones from AT&T.
Even so, the solution presents a large number of benefits for those who are looking to get rid of the terms imposed by AT&T when buying an iPhone. They could simply use an older SIM card coming from this company, using a less expensive data plan. Moreover, the two-year mandatory subscription can be immediately terminated, although in exchange for a considerable sum of money.
Softpedia has not tested this method and does not encourage anyone in doing so. Those interested in this kind of activity will take full responsibility for that.