<p>Has anyone had experience of unlocking an at&t phone to use it with local cell phones overseas? Is at&t willing to give the code? </p>
<p>I sort of understand the concept but am not sure how easy/difficult it is to do. A friend’s daughter is going to the UK for a semester so I suggested it to her rather than buying a phone over there, and she is going to look into it. I usually go to the UK for about 4-5 weeks every year to visit family and just borrow my Mum’s mobile while I am there btu am thinking of doing the unlocking of my phone if it is possible.</p>
<p>I bought a brand new quad band unlocked phone for $25 on ebay. They have simple samsung and motorola model that are great for this. I then can buy a local sim card, or buy one from mysimcard.com before I travel. </p>
<p>ATT won’t give it up, but you can pay for codes, also on ebay, or you can pay to mail it in and have someone do it (ebay again). Cost is usually $5 to buy the instructions or $10 to send it in. Be sure data is turned off. Charges for data add up in a hurry.</p>
<p>i’ll tell ya- it is hard
I bought an ATT phone from an authorized local dealer without a SIM card for D to use abroad.
You can’t unlock it, until you have a SIM card, but because we have Verizon that doesn’t have SIM cards, there was no appeal to buying a card here.
However, while AT & T gave us the directions ( and the code is specific to each phone), and although D had At & T on another line while she was trying to unlock the phone, it locked permanently and she had to buy another phone and card abroad ( which is what I would recommend)</p>
<p>AT&T has an international calling plan. The primary account holder needs to call AT&T to authorize a phone on the plan. I believe you can also authorize it online. As I recall the plan is $5.99/month and it gets you a reduced rate on calls and cheaper texting. </p>
<p>Our son went to Thailand and we did this for his phone. He ended up using a calling card because it was cheaper for the majority of calls he made, but used texting to let us know where he was (much cheaper).</p>
<p>If she can’t unlock the at&t phone there are fairly cheap options for pay as you go phones in the UK. I was just thinking it would be a useful option to use her phone if it was possible. She wants it more for keeping in contact with her friends in the UK (there are 4 of them going together) than for calling home. They are going to use skype for that.</p>
<p>The only time I have used my cell phone a lot for international calls while in the UK was when my Mum was in hospital having surgery for cancer. She had a very bad reaction to the meds she was on (went a bit, well a lot, crazy for a while) so I would leave the hospital really upset and call my husband on my cell while I was waiting for the bus. Our bill for that month was $1000 - yikes. For some reason when I try and text from the UK it never goes through.</p>
<p>This is so timely! My S is leaving for Germany for a three week internship on Thursday. We are trying to figure out what to do with his phone. We do not have AT&T. </p>
<p>There was a simple video on youtube that explains how to unlock his Samsung phone. Our carrier wants to charge about $35 to add their international plan, then it is $3 for the month and $1.75/minute.</p>
<p>I was wondering if he could get a cheap pay as you go one in Germany.</p>
<p>We have been with AT&T a long time and had no trouble getting the unlock code for 2 of our phones last summer. There are also companies that will send you the unlock codes; search online and you should be able to find one. There is a local place here that does them as a walk up service; you might have a local place by you also.</p>
<p>You just need to call AT&T to ask them for them for the code. They will email it to you. As long as you are still a customer they would do it. After you have unlock the phone, try to insert a different company’s sim card in it to see if it works.</p>
<p>I’ve done it to multiple AT&T phones over the years. As I recall, if your contract is up, then it is simple as a call to AT&T customer care. They send you a email or text with the code and you are all set. Remember that changing to a different sim means a different phone number.</p>
<p>I think they have all just recently changed their policies. A month ago I tried with T-mobile, they wouldn’t do it because I have moved to AT&T. I then called AT&T, at first they weren’t very helpful, then I reminded them that I have 5 lines with them.</p>
<p>DS bought phones and cards. They are pretty beaten up from his travels but the all work, except for his Verizon cheapie. He has borrowed and loaned out his phones to his friends when they traveled.</p>
<p>DH who is not very phone savvy got detailed instructions from the ATT folk about how to unlock the phone. There is the $5.99 per month option, but you can make calls even if you don’t have that plan–it’s just a higher per minute charge. We wanted the phone unlocked because we wanted to keep our phone number. Usually DH just buys and installs a local sim card, which is fairly cheap (at least in Asia).</p>
<p>Having gotten the instructions from ATT, when we actually got to Europe we could not get the phone to unlock. We wound up taking it to a mobile phone store where the guy did it for us for $25–no codes needed.</p>
<p>I would suggest you take it to an ATT store here and get them to unlock it for you.</p>
<p>Slightly off topic. I have a legally unlocked I-phone that I bought in Singapore.<br>
I put an ATT ‘pay as you go’ chip in it this summer, and you wouldn’t believe the ‘data sending’ charges that I racked up in California. I had all internet options off, email off, and data roaming off. But ATT still dinged me every time the kids played a game on the phone. </p>
<p>They tell you switch off data roaming when you leave the US so you don’t incur big charges, but I was amazed that there was no way to turn off the data roaming while in the US. (yes, all was switched ‘off’, but data still got sent.) </p>
<p>Obviously, I should have bought another cell phone companies chip to use, one without a G3 data brain.</p>
<p>Back on topic, and by the way-- cell phones in Asia aren’t locked. You buy any phone you want. You buy the sim card for the phone service you want. You don’t like the phone, you buy a different one. Don’t like the service, you go with another company… </p>
<p>I buy a pay as you go phone chip when I get to the airport at Singapore, Bangkok, Jakarta… They cost about $15 dollars and are easy to top up.</p>
<p>I bought the code online, with detailed instructions. I had an ATT Motorola Razr. It was very, very easy. I think it cost about $20.00 The phone was no longer on a plan, so it was legally done. I bought a SIM card online for use in Europe. My DS got to Germany, slipped in the Euro sim card and called from the Frankfurt airport.
Works like a dream!
I helped a friend do the same with two other phones for her daughters. One went to France and the other went to Switzerland for the summer.</p>
<p>Update - AT&T gave her the code after a little wrangling. You have to put the different sim card in then enter the code so she will do that when she gets the sim card when she arrives (this was all a bit last minute as I didn’t think to suggest the unlocking the phone idea till last week).</p>
<p>I’ve unlocked a number of ATT Nokia phones. you can get the unlock codes for free online. You unlock them without a SIM card.</p>
<p>RE the ATT overseas plan (World Connect, if I recall correctly): Avoid it if you can. Overseas calling, with or without one of their plans is very expensive. The savings is pretty minimal. I basically use my ATT phone overseas for emergency calls only. </p>
<p>One other point: Verizon uses a technology (CDMA) that is incompatible with the GSM standard used by most of the world, so unless you have a special Verizon phone (rare), don’t try to unlock it and use it overseas. Can’t do it. T Mobile and AT&T use the GSM standard, so most of their phones will work overseas. However, you might need a quad band phone, because the frequency bands vary from country to country - one more thing to check before you leave.</p>
<p>We went to the UK this summer, and bought a PAYGO plan from CarPhone Warehouse. Phone was incredibly cheap. Depending on your use, phone time was also cheap. It was only 6 cents per minute for calls to the states. Calls in the UK were 30 cents per minute. If calls are primarily within UK, they’ll set you up with a different plan for cheaper UK calls. Text never worked to US, but worked fine from US or within UK.</p>
<p>Another vote for Carphone Warehouse. I had D’s phone unlocked here but she bought her SIM card from them when she spent a semester abroad in London. She also said unlocked phones were incredibly cheap there, some were under $25.</p>