T-Mobile forced to unlock iPhone by German court

Apple and T-Mobile have been forced to allow an unlocked version of the iPhone to be sold in Germany, after the operator Vodafone won a court injunction.

Apple's unique tactic for its first foray into the mobile handset market has been to sign an exclusivity deal with one operator in each country where the iPhone has been released. In the UK that operator is O2, in the US it is AT&T, in France it is Orange and in Germany it is T-Mobile. Although the exact terms of these deals remain murky, it is clear Apple uses their exclusivity to negotiate a share of the revenues generated by iPhone contracts.

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Last week Vodafone went to the German courts to argue Apple's deal with T-Mobile was anti-competitive. The court agreed to a preliminary injunction forcing T-Mobile to sell iPhones that are not locked to its network, meaning SIM cards from rival operators will be usable in the devices. Any iPhone sold in Germany since 19 November will have to be unlocked, free of charge, by T-Mobile if the customer requests for this to be done.

T-Mobile Germany is therefore now selling an unlocked iPhone for €999 - its price with a 24-month contract is €399. A court in Hamburg will hear the case in full next month.

In a statement, T-Mobile said it had no choice but to comply with the ruling. "The legal conditions are attributable to an injunction submitted by competitor Vodafone D2, who was behind T-Mobile in the race to sell the Apple iPhone in Germany," read the statement. "T-Mobile will meet this requirement until the legal aspects have been clarified."

However, T-Mobile argued in its statement that the iPhone's "visual voicemail" feature is still only available through the T-Mobile network and the 24-month contract through which the iPhone is offered. The provider also claimed its Edge network - the data connectivity technology used by the iPhone - has 100 per cent coverage "in the entire T-Mobile network" in Germany.

A spokesperson for Vodafone told silicon.com's sister site ZDNet.co.uk that it had resorted to the courts not because T-Mobile had won the German iPhone contract, but in order to establish a "level playing field".

The spokesperson said: "We don't want to stop the sale of the iPhone. It's not about the iPhone itself - it could be any handset. In Germany, you cannot sell a phone on a long-term contract with the SIM locked in, because it is deemed anti-competitive."

The spokesperson also suggested T-Mobile's price for an unlocked iPhone was "astonishingly high" and confirmed Vodafone would not be pursuing similar action in the UK, where the regulatory landscape is different.

Similar regulations are, however, in place in France, where Orange is due to release an unlocked version of the handset - although its release date and price are yet to be determined.

Apple could not be contacted for comment at the time of writing.

David Meyer writes for ZDNet.co.uk