Actually, depending on the country but here in the states, the contract should
be all that is needed to lock you to the carrier.

Phone subsidies should go away and people should simply shop for the phone that
they want and go on with it like a lot of the rest of the world.

The American public thinks that they "deserve" free phones when nothing is
further from the truth. The word "deserve" is way over used.

--
John S.
e-mail responses to - john at kiana dot net

Anton Irish asked:  "How does one go about unlocking phones?"

As was mentioned in the prior posts, ATT will not unlock a phone, therefore
you need to restort to "self help methods."   You can either pay to have
your phone unlocked or there are a number of coimpanies which will do it
commercially.  Basically, the methods used to unlock a phone boil down to
two:  (a) you can use a key number generator to create the unlock code
necessary to unlock the phone.  Using this method you create the same code
that the mobile provider would and input it yourself.  Commercial unlockers
generally refer to this process as "remote unlocking;"  (b) you can attach a
datacable between your mobile and a PC (or a self-standing device) and run a
program on that machine that either cracks the code or partially (or fully)
reflashes the memory of the phone to defeat the lock.
What solution you go with generally depends on the make and model of the
phone.  Most Nokias are pretty to unlock using a key generator.  With the
new Motorolas, the key number generators aren't widely circulating and
you'll probably need to work with a professional company.

I'm sure that others will have additions, comments, and deletions to what I
have posted, but this should be a start.

No the AT&T contract does not mention that the phone is locked.  But the
contract does say that the phone is for use with the AT&T network and may
not be compatible with other networks.