7:43 a.m. ET Nov. 21, 2007
BERLIN - Deutsche Telekom AG's mobile unit said Wednesday it would offer Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone without a contract to comply with a court injunction issued after Vodafone challenged T-Mobile's exclusive lock on the handset.

T-Mobile will start selling the phone for euro999 (US$1,477) immediately as well as continuing to offer it for the discounted euro399 (US$590) in combination with a two-year contract, the company said in a press release.

The iPhone made its German debut on Nov. 9 _ available only with the two-year contract from T-Mobile. The German unit of rival Vodafone protested that practice at a state court in Hamburg.

The court issued an injunction, dated Nov. 12, barring T-Mobile from offering the iPhone exclusively with the minimum 24-month contract, and also from selling it only with a so-called SIM lock that prevents users from switching the device to any other operator's network.

T-Mobile said any customer can now also have the SIM lock on their phone removed _ including those who have already purchased the iPhone.

T-Mobile said in its statement that it would abide by the conditions "until the legal situation is resolved." The company could not immediately be reached for comment.

On Tuesday, T-Mobile said it would appeal the injunction and it also said it reserves the right to consider seeking damages.

The new phone is not operating on Europe's fastest, so-called 3G networks, but is relying on a different technology called EDGE. T-Mobile argued that it is the only carrier to offer EDGE across Germany.

The iPhone is a combined cell phone and iPod media player that also can access the Internet wirelessly.

Vodafone could not immediately be reached for comment.

Now it gets really interesting.

By the way, they are already offering free iPhones RIGHT NOW. I could simply go into a T-Mobile store and buy an unlocked one.

The price is a bit high, though. I hope that our hackers will find out how T-Mobile unlocks those phones and can reproduce these steps for the new firmware.

(Possibly we could get a dump of the unlocked bootloader/firmware and simply flash existing phones with it?)