There's one thing that even the author of this article didn't get right:
What consumers need to understand is that there are actually four different versions of the iPhone 4S: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and Apple. Only the Apple phone, available from their stores or on-line, is fully unlocked and can be used on any carrier.
While technically this is correct, in reality it's untrue. AT&T will activate an Apple-unlocked iPhone, but Sprint and Verizon will not. Not because the unlocked phone is incapable of working on those networks, but because
Verizon and Sprint choose not to.
Verizon, Sprint and AT&T each have a database of MEIDs/IMEIs that match up with phones that are being sold for service on their network. In Verizon and Sprint's case, if you bring them a CDMA iPhone 4 or an unlocked 4S with a serial number that isn't in their database, they will decline to provide service to that phone. Even if it's unlocked.
To be fair, this policy of theirs isn't iPhone specific. Sprint has
never allowed non-Sprint-specific phones to be activated on their network. You could take an identical CDMA phone from Verizon, which uses the same bands and is a spec-for-spec identical phone as something Sprint sells, and they still won't let you use it.
As for Verizon, they
used to have an "approved" list of outside phones you could take to them to be activated, but it was a very short list, and the phones on that list were very bottom-rung dumbphones. At some point a while back the FCC pressured them to do this, and they did the absolute bare minimum to appease the FCC. Their excuse was that "extensive testing" needed to be done on each phone to ensure it would function properly on the network.... the same excuse Ma Bell used back in the day for making people rent landline phones, instead of letting them buy one, or for prohibiting people from using things like answering machines.
no one seems to have checked on what C-Spire's policy is though. They're small and regional, but if they are willing to fully unlock iPhones and/or take in unlocked iPhones, that would be a nice selling point for them.
