Unlocking Blackberry Bold 9700

Most of the Blackberry devices sold by RIM are locked onto a specific carrier, which means that the phone wouldn’t work with any other carriers SIM

I bought a Bold 9700 which was locked into AT&T network. There are lots of people out there selling the unlock code starting from 10$ all the way to 35$

These guys even give out complementary codes on popular blackberry blogs and have seen them pretty active in the Blackberry forums

When I was searching for “Unlocked Blackberry Bold 9700” in Goolge Product search,I ended up seeing all the unlock providers first in the list (For some reason, Google couldn’t distinguish between “Unlocked” and “Unlock” in my search query)

And most of these in the list were guys selling the code via eBay and the surprising part was the offer price: 1.85$ ~ 2.5$

I went by seller rating and bough the unlock code from eBay. To get the unlock code, as with any “unlocker”, you have to submit the phone IMEI , phone model and the carrier

I was surprised to see the code delivered to my email within 10 min.

Once you get the unlock code, the process of unlocking the phone is pretty straightforward (This again might differ from phone to phone)

For Bold 9700

1. Go to “Manage Connections” and select “Turn All Connections Off”
2. Go to Options -> Advanced Options -> SIM Card
3. You do end up seeing a empty screen here. Type MEPD (case insensitive) on this screen
4. You would see a list in which “Network” would be marked as “Active”
5. Type MEP2 on this screen to bring up the unlock code entry text box (note 2 here is Alt+E)
6. Type in the unlock code received from the “unlocker” and you should see “Network” status changing from “Active” to “Disabled”

Now the device is unlocked and work with any GSM carrier. I would recommend anyone to use eBay service rather than paying exorbitant amounts to the “unlockers” charging almost more than 10-30 times the price offered on eBay

Note: If you are a long standing customer of the carrier, you can even call the customer care and ask for the unlock code. You should mention that you are traveling out of the country and intend to use the phone with some other SIM. This way you can get the unlock code for FREE !