One of the bummers during the G1 Announcement was T-Mobile exec Cole Brodman telling us two things in no uncertain terms:
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No Tethering your G1 to your Laptop to use its internet connection
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No Unlocking the device to use on other networks.
Well, Engadget got a sit down with him and discovered that there is a little bit of uncertainty within those terms after all.
First, the thing is open source and anybody can write whatever they want for it, so T-Mobile isn’t going to go to any great lengths to stop us from tethering. Problem there, of course, is that they’re also saying that they’re going to cap data at a ridiculously low 1GB per month, which makes tethering a little dicey.
Secondly, T-Mobile has a long-standing (and rather impressive) policy of freely offering unlock codes to most customers upon request and after a 3 month period to make it easier for them to travel overseas. That apparently won’t change with the G1. There’s a caveat here too, though, if you’re thinking of slapping in an AT&T SIM card: it will work on an unlocked G1, but you’re never going to get 3G because T-Mobile and AT&T use different radio bands for 3G. So much for GSM being the universal standard, eh?