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<blockquote data-quote="BrownSuit" data-source="post: 413348" data-attributes="member: 14437">So the locked explanation:We have two phone networks in our country at this point in time, CDMA (Verizon and some Sprint networks still, the takeover of Nextel has skewed this slightly) and GSM (AT&amp;T, T-Mobile, Sun-Com, All-Tel, most of the Mom and Pop Carriers).Keep in mind the rest of the world is on GSM for the most part.Verizon and Sprint Phones can generally only be used on those networksAny of the GSM carriers have SIM Cards in them, that track the charges, instead of something pre-programmed.To keep people from swapping out chips left and right and to be able to continue to charge high costs and get people to commit to long contracts, each phone carrier &quot;locks&quot; the phone to their network.If I have an AT&amp;T Phone, I can swap my sim card out in your AT&amp;T Phone without any problem. If you have a T-Mobile Phone, I can&#039;t just change sim cards. The phone has to be unlocked first, which is basically a hack. You can download the kits from eBay for $10-$30 depending on the phone. You can buy an unlocked phone direct from the manufacturer, but it&#039;s going to cost you $100-$200 more (in some cases $300). So I probably confused everybody more with my explanation, if so just google it and hopefully you&#039;ll stumble across something.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="BrownSuit, post: 413348, member: 14437"] So the locked explanation: We have two phone networks in our country at this point in time, CDMA (Verizon and some Sprint networks still, the takeover of Nextel has skewed this slightly) and GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sun-Com, All-Tel, most of the Mom and Pop Carriers). Keep in mind the rest of the world is on GSM for the most part. Verizon and Sprint Phones can generally only be used on those networks Any of the GSM carriers have SIM Cards in them, that track the charges, instead of something pre-programmed. To keep people from swapping out chips left and right and to be able to continue to charge high costs and get people to commit to long contracts, each phone carrier "locks" the phone to their network. If I have an AT&T Phone, I can swap my sim card out in your AT&T Phone without any problem. If you have a T-Mobile Phone, I can't just change sim cards. The phone has to be unlocked first, which is basically a hack. You can download the kits from eBay for $10-$30 depending on the phone. You can buy an unlocked phone direct from the manufacturer, but it's going to cost you $100-$200 more (in some cases $300). So I probably confused everybody more with my explanation, if so just google it and hopefully you'll stumble across something. [/QUOTE]

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