Are the 8700's from Cingular locked?
 

Quick question, does anyone know if the 8700's Cingular are selling are locked? I know for a while Cingular sold only unlocked phones, but after the AT&T merger things have changed. If somoene who has one has poped in a sim from a different provider and can let me know I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Someone on these boards either yesterday or today was saying that they stuck a TMobile Sim into an 8700c and it was working great.

Cingular has not shipped unlocked BlackBerrys since they bought AT&T Wireless. All of the Cingular branded 8700c BlackBerrys are coming out SIM card locked.

Some of the early release models (beta testers and the like) are probably unlocked. Early evaluation models usually are. But the 8700c BBs shipping today are locked.

The only thing active under the MEPD Sim Card display is Network Active. Everything else is disabled and I believe that "Network Active" constitutes a "locked" device. I would have to pop the card back into my unlocked 7290 to verify this though.

if you called cingular and asked them to unlock your phone or send you and unlocked phone because of going overseas would they do that?

Nope. Only T-Mobile extends that courtesy to their customers.

meaning that i can call tmobile and ask them to unlock the 8700 or that they are the only service provider that will do that? sorry for the questions.

T-Mobile will unlock T-Mobile phones for T-Mobile customers if you have been a customer of theirs for 3 months, and are in good standing from a credit perspective.

So is it confirmed that Cingular will not unlock under any circumstances?

I bought my cingular last week and it was locked. I did call them this past monday and asked for the unlock code. They said it will take 5 days for them to give me the code to unlock it. Hopefully I'll hear from them. I am leaving the country next week and I would like to use my 8700.

You can use the 8700 out of the country without it being unlocked, you just can't put in a foreign SIM card. Be advised that if you DO put in a foreign SIM card, unless that card is from a carrier with BB service, you will lose your e-mail service.

Besides getting a code from Cingular which I have never tried and heard that it is near impossible there is no way to unlock the 8700c

tmobile told me that THEY would get the proper unlocking codes from RIM to unlock a Cinglar 8700.... Somebodys just gonna have to try it...

We'll see on that one. Not sure who you spoke to at T-Mobile, but I just sent a request to our T-Mobile corporate team to unlock an 8700c. I think the chances of T-Mobile unlocking a Cingular devices are between slim and none.

From T-Mobile's East Coast Engineering Manager:

"We only have the unlock codes for the devices we lock. You would need to contact Cingular for a code for the 8700."

NJblackberry: I am only interested in using my 8700 as a phone devive to make calls and use SMS 1:-"2 - *. +_( +6 (:2 9+_,(3). I do not want to get billed for roaming chargesM what ddid you mean buy loosing my email account? Thanks in advance.

You will lose the ability to send or receive e-mail - you won't lose any e-mail. I poor choice of words on my part.

I'd be intereseted to know if Cingular will unlock your 8700 - even for the legitimate reason you give them. Them have been completely unreasonably when we've asked for unlock codes in the past. One of the reasons I am a T-Mobile customer.

i know how to unlock the 8700...

yes?

well heres the thing, i found someone to get me a 8700, hes a cingular cust. and all we did was called cingular and said that we need an unlock code for the 8700. Cingular responded with "what do you need that for, we can only provide that if you submit a request" so we told the rep that it was for oversees travel and said that that is the only way they WOULD unlock it. its basically like help desk, enter ticket, wait for response, initiate action.