I didn't get the PM, but that's okay. I'm sure lots of people are interested in unlocking. The best kind of unlocking is to get your carrier to unlock it for you. That doesn't jailbreak or root the device. Unfortunately, many carriers won't do it if you're still in contract. Others will charge you a fairly significant amount of money. Others say they will do it, but don't tell their customer service people that they do it, so it can be somewhat frustrating trying to get it done. (I believe that Rogers in Canada will unlock a phone for $50, but only if your contract is over. I'm not sure about Virgin Mobile.)

There are lots of how-to videos on YouTube. There are a growing number of stores that will jailbreak or root your device. (There's one up the street from me.) A tethered jailbreak is pretty easy to reverse which can be a plus: or a minus because if you want to upgrade to a newer version of iOS, the phone is locked again.

A friend of mine has had an original iPhone jail broken for years and is quite happy. A computer programmer friend of mine was able to jailbreak his iPhone quite easily, but became very frustrated because the battery drains quickly.

We've experimented with unlocking our customer's phones but don't offer it as a service because we've been unable to find a fast, reliable way of unlocking that the vast majority of people like, that doesn't leave them with a phone whose battery drains quickly. We're going to bring in a $199 unlocked Android smart phone that works anywhere in the world. It won't be the latest and greatest, but it will be farily recent, pretty easy to use and perform most of the functions people require. We tested the concept on a couple of iPhone users and they preferred having a cheaper unlocked travel phone to jail breaking. I'm not sure if it will appeal to people with the latest and greatest Android. But if you love your current phone, and your carrier offers it as a service, carrier unlocking is definitely the way to go.