Unlocking your iPhone from Optus while travelling

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —September 11, 2010
Filed in Anecdotes, News

I’m in Singapore at the moment. Had an amazing time last week because I spent three days with many of the story practitioners I really admire at the Origins Business Narrative Conference and learned heaps.

But there was a glitch. Whenever I travel overseas with my trusty iPhone I get hit with ridiculous global and data roaming costs by my provider, Optus.

So on this trip I decided to get thrifty and went down to Starhub (local telco) and bought a 5-day mobile broadband SIM card (don’t forget your passport) for $25. It has up to 2GB of data downloads, a bunch of free text messages and cheap calls.

So I popped my sparkling new SIM into my iPhone and nothing happened. Couldn’t find the Starhub signal. Restarted the phone, still nothing. Then is occurred to me that my phone was probably locked to Optus.

Ready for a fight I called Optus (+61 2 8082 2642 24/7 support) and asked for my phone to be unlocked and the nice call centre man said “sure thing,” punched some numbers into his computers and said, “it’s done.”

So I synced my iPhone and got a message from iTunes saying my phone had been unlocked. I’m now a happy camper.

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

Comments

  1. Optus says:

    Hey Shaun,
    It’s great to hear your positive experience with us calling from overseas 🙂 Just thought I’d drop you a line to let you know if at anytime you need any assistance with your service you can also reach us online via different social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter (@Optus) or by sending us an enquiry via our online form → http://yesopt.us/ID
    Good to know if there’s ever a time you can’t make a phone call!
    Happy travelling!
    Cheers
    Andy Radoslav
    Optus Social Media Response Team

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