I’ve updated my 3GS to OS5 and its locked by the network. It was originally on O2 and they never unlocked it. Its been used on T-Mobile prior to OS update and ran without problems.
Apple claim they can’t unlock it due to having no network lock access.
O2 expect me to have one of their simcards in it for a week before they can unlock it. (o2 doesn’t work within a 2 mile radius of home)
Any other way of unlocking it? Cheers

iPhones ‘unlock’ in an odd way in the sense that, on android phones you need to have the device unlocked to ‘jailbreak’ it, whereas with iPhones you’ll need to jailbreak it to unlock it. Apple don’t recommend this, as in some (very rare) instances it can ‘brick’ the device, and they thus say that if you do Jailbreak the device, the warranty is automatically made void.

I had done it before on my old 3G when iOS4 came out and I was rather rudely denied the chance of having multitasking and backgrounds on my home screen and I thought I should. After going through the faff of backing up all my previous data/contacts/notes and downloading “Redsn0w” I found the phone couldn’t actually cope with it. So I restored it. I have a 3GS now so the said issues are no longer a problem.

Went off a bit, but I hope that helps… there should be “Jailbreaking/Unlocking guides for iPhones” on youtube 🙂

EDIT: [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdWYW0sECpQ[/video]
This should give you somewhat of an outline of what to do, but it is a tad outdated, though I can’t see the process having changed much since then 😛

With youre ios5 update youll have updated the baseband so there is no ultrasn0w unlock.

So theres no unofficial way afraid.

I’ve found out my answer. I’ve had to put a PAYG sim in it with £15 on it. The network )2 has now recognised it and have been able to unlock the phone. I haven’t tried it with the t-mobile card yet as i’m trying to fettle the damn computer (see other posts) 1st before resyncing it.

Basically if its network locked it looks like the original operator has to unlock it, something they can normally do for free, but mine was a fews outside of its contract hence the £15 charge