I don't think Tmobile will unlock a phone that no longer has service on it, but I may be wrong. They are not fast, you have to put in a request and in my case it took four or five days for them to send the code. It's worth calling and asking them.

I am not familiar enough with the blackberry unlocking to know if others do it easily or not, somebody else will chime in soon I'm sure. Some phones it's as simple as putting in the number on the back of the phone and software generates an unlock code for them, others not so easy.