Hey everybody,
A while back, I was helping my Dad with a new mobile phone at a unnamed mobile phone seller (ahem, Allphones). While selecting, the salesman said "You can choose from the Optus selection and just buy a Virgin Starter pack with it and use the Virgin SIM." At the time I thought it was just the salesman trying to upsale us, but is it true? Can you get a prepaid mobile from Optus or another carrier and simply ignore the provided SIM and use a SIM of your choice?

The reason I post this is that I am currently in the market for a Nokia 6300, and I would love to be with Virgin (Free V2V texts ) I emailed Allphones a couple of days ago and still have got no reply.

Thanks in advance,
Larry

yep this is true, i got a s500i for my mum for mothers day and a optus sim with it and it works perfectly. apparently the company that owns optus also owns virgin mobile in Aus.
hope this helped.

Virgin is owned by Optus so that's probably why they're compatible, don't think the same applies for other carriers. Or the salesman was just lying to get you to buy the phone.

if you get an optus locked phone, GENERALLY a virgin sim will work in it too. there are some notable exceptions from LG.

but why buy a nokia 6300 when on ebay you can snag a significantly better nokia 6120 classic for around $150, unlocked

Hey guys thanks for the quick replies.

macnev-it's a relief that it's like that because my current phone - a Sony Ericsson T290i - is the worst phone I have ever used.
NeoRicen-thanks for the reply, I thought at first the salesman was lying

Thanks again, this really broadens the horizons of what phone I might be buying next (Virgin's prepaid selection is just awful).

EDIT: Sanjay, I really don't want to mess around with eBay, as that posting strike is on at the moment (I want to get it in the next month or so)

SingTel owns both Optus and the Australian division of Virgin, as said above, that's why you can stick an Optus SIM into a Virgin phone and vice versa. They're still locked, just not with each other.

cool, so if I could get a prepaid but locked 3G iphone, i could then go stick my Virgin sim card in there?

Ollie

From Optus? Probably, but I'd wait for an official word, no telling what carriers are going to do with the iPhone.

Hmm. I'd say yes, but if anything was to be an exception to that rule, it would be the iPhone, which I think is locked by apple, for the carriers, not by the carriers themselves.

Well that was in the past, given the change in business model it could well be the responsibility of the carriers now.

interesting i never knew this

I know it's off topic but sox11, your avatar is sooooooo awesome. What's it from?

i cant see Optus or Vodafone locking handsets to their network.
based on the fact that providers who do locking are not stocking the phone at the moment it might be locking will come into account later.

I really hope that handsets aren't locked to the network, it would only take a few weeks for someone to work out how to break the iphone locking i cant see them really bothering.

I'd wait till closer to the release date.

They don't need to be locked on a contract, because they've already got you paying at least the early termination fee. They could still lock them though, just to make some extra dough.

This has turned into another iPhone thread

I think that the iPhone will be locked to Optus and Vodafone, and a Virgin SIM will not work in the iPhone.