Is it possible to unlock an iPhone for use on another network (or for international usage)? According to iphoneunlocking.com, it is - and apparently 4,007 iPhones have been unlocked since the service's inception. That's out of a total 130,000 requests received by the company.

It's not all rosy, howevzer. While unlocking the iPhone sounds great on paper, by switching carriers you lose some of the nicer features such as visual voicemails (since these are tied to AT&T's network). Not to mention that iTunes syncing gets a little messed up - you'll need a software hack to fix the problem.

(Update 7/2/07): according to the iphoneunlocking blog, if you're about to activate your phone and want to make a little side cash ($100 to be exact!), then you can be a guinea pig/beta tester:

"We need testers.

Are you about to activate your handset for the first time or have another AT&T card you can activate for your handset? We need to monitor the traffic between iTunes and your phone.

If you are using a Mac and have iChat or Skype, we will pay you $100 for the privilege."

(end update)

Of course, the service is still in beta, so it *should* only get better. The question is, can Apple do anything on its end to prevent unlock codes from being distributed to the ends of the earth?

Link: iphoneunlocking.com

Source: 'Company Claims to Have "Unlocked" 4,000 iPhones' - Business 2.0