Phone Unlocking in Calgary

Often you do not, and TechBrotherz will tell you that before taking your money. Under the CRTC Wireless Code, as revised in Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2017-200, every mobile device sold in Canada on or after 1 December 2017 must be provided already unlocked. For devices sold before that date, carriers must unlock them free of charge when asked.

So if the phone is on your own account with a Canadian carrier, the first call should be to that carrier rather than to a repair store. It costs nothing and it is your right. Anyone telling you otherwise is either misinformed or hoping you are.

Paid unlocking exists for the cases that rule does not reach: a phone bought secondhand from someone whose account you cannot access, a phone brought in from another country, a phone from a carrier that no longer operates, or a device where the original account holder is simply not contactable. Those are the situations where a paid unlock solves a problem a phone call cannot.

A phone reported lost or stolen is blacklisted on the national IMEI database Canadian carriers share. A blacklisted phone cannot be unlocked by TechBrotherz, by any other shop, or by the carrier itself, and it will not work on a Canadian network whatever SIM goes in it. If a secondhand phone will not activate, this is the most common reason.

A phone with an outstanding balance or an unpaid device financing agreement is a related case. The carrier can refuse to unlock it until the account is settled, and that is a billing matter rather than a technical one.

An Iphone locked to someone else's Apple Account through Activation Lock is a different restriction entirely, and unlocking will not help. Only the original owner can remove it by signing the device out of their account. We check both before you pay, because we would rather you kept the money.

The definitive test is putting a SIM from a different carrier in the phone and seeing whether it registers on the network and can make a call. Nothing you can check in the settings is as reliable as that, and it costs nothing.

On an Iphone, Settings, then General, then About has a Carrier Lock line that reads No SIM restrictions when the phone is unlocked. That line is accurate on current iOS versions and it is worth checking before paying anyone, here or anywhere else. On Android the equivalent varies by manufacturer, which is why we still trust the second-SIM test.

Bring the phone to the Store and we will check it for you. If it turns out to be unlocked already, that is the end of the conversation and there is nothing to pay. We would rather tell you that than take money for work that was not needed.