On the contrary -- whether it's necessary or not (a matter of opinion), it's
still a reasonable way to ensure that your obligation is fulfilled.  Don't
want the lock?  Don't get a subsidized phone.  Simple.

That probably was still a single SKU; i.e., unlocked phones even with a
subsidy, as I know Cingular has done from time to time.  I suspect this was
simply a matter of expediency or oversight.

Many store clerks are badly misinformed, especially in dealer (as opposed to
company) stores (which are often hard to distinguish from company stores).
Better to call Cingular Customer Care.

Somewhere around Tue, 14 Feb 2006 06:42:25 -0800, while reading
alt.cellular.cingular, I think I thought I saw this post from Scott en
Aztlán <scottenaztlan@yahooNOSPAM.com>:

Proves it?  Come on, that proves nothing except that they used to do it, not
that it made sense.  Perhaps they learned from experience that it wasn't
worth it.  Things change, and smart companies change when they find
problems.

Geez, people, Cingular is simply a company that provides a service, not a
religion.  There are so many assumptions introduced as facts to prove other
arguments, and accusations about conspiracies for every time an agent makes
a mistake, or gets misinterpreted, it really gets rediculous.  And then,
when all else fails, you accuse someone of working for Cingular if they
don't accept the pure BS that's flying around.  

This forum should be a place for people to share information, not have
religious arguments or vents for people who have no friends to complain to
(which is understandable, as who wants to constanly listen to someone
complain about their trivial personal problems with some company.  You
people need to learn when to put it to bed.  Lighten up, and get on with
your lives - It's only a cellphone, and life's too short to waste it on such
trivialities.

Because recouping the cost of the phone is not the reason for the
subsidy lock, it never was.

What changed is that Cingular realized that it'd be less likely for a
customer with a locked phone to leave for another GSM carrier, than one
with an unlocked phone. Remember, most people don't have any
understanding of the whole locked versus unlocked issue. If T-Mobile
tells them that a Cingular phone won't work on the T-Mobile network
because the phone is locked to Cingular, how many people do you think
will research the issue and find a way to get the phone unlocked? Some
will decide to move to T-Mobile and get a new phone, but many will
decide to stick with Cingular.

I actually have a prime example of this. My mother was on Cingular,
paying way too much for the smallest GSM plan, after being migrated to
GSM from AT&T TDMA. She was complaining about the cost, but she didn't
want a new phone because she didn't want to learn how to use a different
model, and didn't want to have to re-enter her phone numbers. At 80
years old, she's not really into researching how to unlock a phone or
transfer phone books. I walked her through unlocking her phone
(amazingly it went smoothly), and she took it into T-Mobile for
activation on a prepaid plan. She said that the salesperson was
impressed that she had unlocked her Cingular phone! Her complaint about
Cingular basically mirrored Jeremy's, though she just left Cingular
without complaining about it for weeks (of course they tried to talk her
into staying by offering more minutes, but she didn't want any more
minutes, she wanted the pricing that she had with AT&T TDMA). The
coverage with T-Mobile is fine where she lives, and not great, but not
much worse than Cingular in the areas she visits most (Atlanta and
Silicon Valley).

A post-paid, low usage plan at $25-30 per month (what AT&T was charging
for their TDMA service) would be popular with low usage customer that
still want the MTM and N&W. I suppose that the carriers fear that a lot
of people with "plans that are too big for them" would switch to lower
use, less expensive plans. But prepaid is losing its image as being only
for low-life, credit-challenged people, and will fill that niche.

Thats BS,  Call Customer Care/Service they said if you do international
travel,  they unlock it takes 3 days for someone to get back to you but
I was told that they do this.  Believing that they do it is another story.

Or Goto http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/forumdisplay.php?f=67 and try here.

As my son is always saying Google it dad