Has anyone on here had any experience unlocking an iPhone for use on another carrier? I've read (please correct my if I'm wrong) that it's legal, so I hope this doesn't step on any toes. If you've done it, could you PM me with the address of a site you'd endorse? Thanks. I'm traveling to the US in 2 months for a race and I'd rather do pay as you go on AT&T than pay 30.00 to Rogers for 20mb of data.

It's legal... but "jailbreaking" your phone will void all warranty and support, and broke phones seem to have a lot of problems, usually requiring a complete hard reboot... but if you wanted (I've never done it) you can google how, many walk through.

Thanks Magnum.

I'm editing this post, the below is kinda moot i someone can clear this question up for me: Does jailbraking your iPhone unlock or at least make it an option? Maybe the unlock is a side affect.

My iPhone 3GS's out of warranty anyway (Bought in Dec 09) so that's not a concern. Is Jail Breaking a required step toward unlocking? Also, the online steps are the problem. I've found both ones that send you an unlock code via email and other that say you need to install software on your PC which will unlock your phone. I don't know a legit one of either type so I thought I'd ask here. For all I know 9/10 of the sites' testimonials are bots to trick you into a scam.

Rogers (my carrier) said I can't unlock until I pay them 50.00 + tax, and that won't be eligible until Dec of this year when I'm off contract.

From my experience with iPhones the last couple of years, Jailbreaking and Unlocking are different things.

Jailbreaking disables the part of the iPhone OS that limits all apps and files used by the OS to only ones signed by Apple, fairly easy to do if you are running on iOS versions that contain the vulnerabilities that allow installing the jailbreak (iOS 5.01 is the latest that is usable for jailbreak, iOS 5.1 is not).

Unlocking allows the iPhone OS to operate on any GSM carrier as long as you have the appropriate SIM card for service, this is much harder to do and maintain as there are less vulnerabilities and unlocks available for the baseband. If you buy an iPhone in Europe I believe it is unlocked, here in the US ATT just started unlocking the iPhone if you are past the 2 year contract, you just need to ask them.

I don't unlock my iPhone, but I usually jailbreak because I like to use a lot of the power user features that make the UI more useful (access to WiFi/Bluetooth settings from lockscreen) and add things that I was used to from my palmpilot days (calendar and mail on lockscreen).

The main pain about jailbreaking is that you end up not being able to update to the latest iOS patch version when it comes out until someone figures out a way to jailbreak it, and this can take months, in the meantime some apps can detect you are not on the latest OS version and may refuse to run or install until you update, and if you update you lose the jailbreak. For example currently I can't run iPhoto because it requires iOS 5.1. Also there are tons of jailbreak apps available and they are not as thoroughly tested as AppStore apps so you have to be selective about which things you install and how many of them as it's easy to add a ton of cool crap that slows the phone down. I keep it to just a few handy things that polish up the iOS UI and usability.

I do believe jailbreaking is required for unlocking but I am not sure as I've never tried it, if you end up unlocking let us know what your experience is like. My iPhone will be out of contract in Jan and I plan to ask them to unlock it then.

Thanks John, great details for someone new like me! I found out yesterday evening by googling loads more that because of the baseband my phone has, the only way it can be jail broken is to switch to the BB used by the iPad. And that will probably break my GPS. And there's no wy to downgrade it. Looks like I'm stuck with paying 40 dollars for 25 texts and 20 mb of data after all. Ah well at least it's risk free..

No prob, yeah I wish iPhones here in North America were treated the same as in Europe, let us buy them unlocked and then able to use it on any GSM carrier instead of the carriers selling the phones cheaper and then locking us into 2 year contracts to offset the subsidized phone cost, of course it works out better for their quarterly stock prospectus to be able to report how many new locked in subscribers they got...

BTW in case you want a good site for jailbreak/unlock, here's the ones I use to keep up with it:
http://www.idownloadblog.com
http://modmyi.com/forums/

These are legit forums about jailbreaking/unlocking and not like some of the iOS app pirating sites you may find when searching for jailbreak info via google, I personally believe in jailbreaking to open up power user features and UI tweaking but hate that pirating crap, I can't understand why anyone would pirate stuff like a $1 or $2 app ...

Thanks kludger, that's exactly the info I was looking for. I'm pretty sure that I'm stuck unless I can somehow do a (non scam!) IMEI unlock code though. I don't want to install the iPad Base Band on this thing. Guess I'm out 40 bucks for the travel plan.

Yeah unfortunately I think that's what I would do, only use the iPhone when in wifi areas, and maybe just pick up a generic unlocked GSM phone or prepaid phone if I still wanted to use the cel a lot avoid the roaming charges.