I have a locked, but officially activated 3G iphone that i brought with me to Egypt, the ATT card does not work but i was messing with it and swapped cards with the local company (mobinil) well the phone did not show a signal but i was able to make a 911 call ,but only once. To do it again i had to swap cards and swap again which allowed me to make a call once again. I am not sure if this is helpful or not but maybe it will help in an unlock so thought to share it with everyone

uhm, i can do 112 and 110 (like in the US 911) calls even w/o any sim in my iphone 2g/3g. I dont think this means something special.

well i guess that i wanted to say that the call actually goes through and you can talk to the other side when they pickup

You should try this again, but this time try the double-tap-home flaw to get to your favourites list and try to call someone from there.

I tried swapping sim cards around on my legit activatet iPhone 3G, but it wont get any signal.

Ok now thats weird. I swapped my iPhone plan sim with a prepaid T-Mobile sim, and it gets signal. Now it shows "Special" just below the time. lol I didnt know that.

It is an unspoken standard that all phones can call 911 (or 112) at any time. It doesn't matter if the phone is locked or unactivated, if there is a GSM network in the vicinity, you will get through to emergency services. In fact, if you have an old phone with an actual keypad, you can usually dial 911/112 even if the keypad is locked (the phone might not acknowledge it until you actually finish the number, but it works most of the time).

That being said, it's not a good idea to go around dialing 911 just for fun, for many moral and legal reasons.