AT&T To Start Unlocking Off-Contract iPhone Handsets Starting Today

Tired of having to buy a loaner phone for international use? If you're an AT&T iPhone user, and you have been for an extended period of time, you're in luck starting today. Along with the Lumia 900 going on sale today, AT&T is also making a major policy change. They're now unlocking iPhones for those customers who have one out-of-contract. In other words, iPhone units which currently only operate with an AT&T micro-SIM card can be unlocked in order to work with micro-SIM cards from around the world. Many nations sell iPhones this way already, but not America: these phones are locked to the carrier in which they're sold under.

It's a move that'll surely help out traveling iPhone users, but we wish AT&T would take the next step and allow even on-contract users to have their phones unlocked as well -- all phones, not just iPhones. Here's the quote from AT&T:

Beginning Sunday, April 8, we will offer qualifying customers the ability to unlock their AT&T iPhones. The only requirements are that a customer's account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.