Unlock your phone from Vodafone, O2, Meteor or Three Ireland
So you purchased a fancy phone but find your current Irish mobile company not that fancy price-wise? Vodafone, O2, Meteor, Three and other Ireland’s mobile networks all lock their phones from being used outside of their network.
Normally when your contract is over you are entitled to get your phone unlocked. If you can, try the official route first and contact your mobile phone company. The method below applies mostly to unlocking all “Pay as you go” phones.
Most mobile operators in Ireland require certain amount of top-ups before they will unlock the phone for you. Some – like Vodafone Ireland – will not unlock even in you top up by required amount – unless you get through painful procedure of posting on their forum and then chasing customer service.
Unless your mobile phone is really ancient, you need so called NAC (Network Access Code). This code is automatically requested by a phone after after putting in a disallowed sim card. Example – if you bought your phone from O2 you need to put in Vodafone’s sim, if you bought from 3 (Three) – put in O2 Ireland’s one and so on.
The NAC code is unique for each phone and will work only with phone it is generated for!
Where to get the code from you ask? From ebay. Just go to ebay and key into search “unlock code <your mobile make and model>”. Go through sellers. Pick ones with many completed transactions and no/few negative comments.
Normally they will charge you 5-10 euros for the code. It will take them around 24 hours to get back to you with NAC code.
Follow the instructions they send you (this involves sending them unique IMEI number of your phone, easy to get), wave goodbye to your expensive mobile company.
Does it make sense to use websites offering free or paid NAC codes? Find out on the next page…
