TUAW reader AJ has claimed that, by taking his AT&T prepaid SIM card into a store run by UK carrier Vodafone, the staff there were able to reassign the SIM’s serial number to his existing Vodafone account. Coming back home, he quickly stuffed the AT&T card back into his iPhone and had the handset working on the UK network, with his UK number but no visual voicemail feedback has been obviously diverse with some excitedly planning to try the same with themselves while others shed tears and point to what are a number of unusual aspects to this story. For a start, why wouldn’t Vodafone just give him a new SIM card rather than port over the old one? Is it even possible for the system to accept the

full serial number, when some claim only the last nine out of the full twenty digits are changeable on the carrier’s computers?
So it’s not impossible, in fact given the iPhone uses a check to make sure the SIM card they are using is from AT&T before it will allocate service. As long as you could get another operator to use that card then it should unlock the handset just wondering whether it’s particularly possible. People familiar with rival UK network O2’s systems say that the exploit wouldn’t work with them, seeing as they’re limited to those last nine numbers to change. Is there anyone else in the UK with an iPhone planning to try this? If you do so make sure to let us know in the comments!