Friday, December 19, 2008

Beat the system: pre-paid iPhone 3G

I consider myself a Libertarian, yet some government laws I can only applaud. In Italy it is illegal to sell a cell-phone that is locked to a provider. In Canada, there is no such law protecting the consumers. This means that if you want an iPhone in Canada, you end up paying more than 3000 dollars in fees to Rogers in 3 years. And that is the best case scenario. It may end up being much much more.

Well, I am happy to announce: I beat the system! I got my iPhone from ebay, imported to the US from Italy. This means that my iPhone (the fancy white one with 3G) will work with any GSM provider. I now have a rare commodity in Canada: an iPhone that works on pre-paid vouchers.

I Sincerely hope that Rogers is punished severely as soon as possible for their nasty business practices. I did my part. I hope the rest of Canada will follow.

3 comments:

Bram Stolk Sr said...

That I-Phone you have now has seen already a lot of this world. Parts came from China. The Manual was printed in Taiwan. The unit was packed in the USA. Became shipped to Italy. Returned to the USA and finally imported into Vancouver Canada.
Is it still working OK? Environmental specs must be OK then!!
BTW: 8GB Iphones are FREE in NL with 2 yr contract at EUR 21,95Mo

Anonymous said...

Of course, if you really want to stick it to The Man you should buy this phone. You can even run Android on it. After all, Apple is part of the system too...

Bram said...

Jacco, I agree. Originally, I considered the openmoko phone. When I saw a youtube video booting linux on the device, I was a little disappointed. Booting linux on that thing took ages. And yes, Apple is getting more and more like m$. Did you see the Simpsons episode about "Mapple" a few weeks ago? Classic stuff!