This is all history - but I did ask at one of the rare NOKIA shops in
Tokyo
how to use the unlocked phones in Japan and where to get the necessary
SIM cards from. They were very cryptic and mysterious about it and
did not
clearly say which mobile operators sell the SIM cards, which could be
out into the NOKIA phones which they were trying to sell for about
YEN 50,000 or YEN 60,000 in unlocked condition.
I decided not to buy one of these unlocked NOKIA phones in Tokyo.
However I did buy a prepaid NOKIA phone in Liechtenstein (a small
European country between Switzerland and Austria - for those who have
not been there yet I recommend to go there - its very beautiful),
from the
official shop of Liechtenstein's official Mobile Phone Company, and
it was not locked at all.
In the UK I found out recently, Mobile Operators have the regulatory
obligation to unlock prepaid phones on request (and payment of a
fee) - however the mobile operators are very shy talking about this.
Actually, the UK regulator even had an enquiry about why the mobile
operators are so shy to inform customers about this service, and
abut this consumer right to get the prepaid phones unlocked by the
operator. If this was better announced, it would put all the black
market
unlockers out of business.
Gerhard
On 2006/09/19, at 6:52, Nik Frengle wrote:
> From what I saw, admittedly in only one day working in the shop,
> even if you
> bought a Nokia handset and took it to a shop and bought a SIM card,
> they
> wouldn't give you the information necessary to configure the web
> functions.
> I don't know if the Nokia shop can do that for you, but I am
> reasonably sure
> that a Vodafone shop won't.
> On 9/17/06, Gerhard Fasol <fasol@eurotechnology.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 2006/09/17, at 21:27, Nick May wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 Sep 2006, at 19:25, Oliver Wittchow wrote:
>>>
>>>> Why not offer unlocked phones for foreigners
>>
>>
>> But NOKIA does sell unlocked NOKIA phones in Japan!
>> You can buy those - but they obviously are without any
>> operator subsidy, and you have to buy a DoCoMo or
>> SoftBank SIM card separately. There is no problem to do this.
>>
>> Gerhard
Received on Tue Sep 19 06:44:05 2006