Ladies and gentlemen, your cheaper iPhones can now work with (almost) any network in the US, thanks to the efforts of scattered teams of hackers, who have finally managed how to break AT&T’s exclusivity.

After less than 3 months of presence on the market and a jaw-dropping $200 price cut, the iPhone has finally been unlocked, and what is even more surprising is that unlocking solutions keep coming in as the days pass.

First, there is the iPhoneSIMFree. All you have to is install the iPhoneSIMFree application and initialize it from the keyboard-less interface, making sure you have the Wi-Fi signal active. Also be advised to fully charge your gadget’s battery and to set your “Auto-lock” feature to NEVER, in order for that not to interfere with the unlocking process (the modifications can be reversed after iPhoneSIMFree finishes flashing the handheld’s firmware).

But iPhoneSIMFree has a slight disadvantage: it isn’t free, despite the fact that it is easy to deploy (it takes about 2-3 minutes to complete).

So another team, this time open-source focused, has tried its luck with developing cost-free unlocking software for the UniquePhone and apparently its members have come up with a better application. The team is called iPhone Dev Team and besides removing AT&T’s tight grip on the iPhone, their solution (called iUnlock) is also fully restore-resistant. However, it’s got its downsides, like the fact that YouTube videos might be unavailable once you have the new firmware and you activate the new SIM.

I repeat, the solution is completely free, unlike the iPhoneSIMFree, which costs about $100. In order to be able to use though, it you’ll need the latest firmware available for the iPhone (v. 1.02) and a version of iTunes inferior to 7.4. Modem firmware should also be 03.14.08_G.

Hopefully, we’ll see soon more free unlocking solutions that exploit iPhone’s firmware weaknesses, since Apple is not really concerned about the mass hysteria generated on the Web around this major breakthrough.

Apple's Greg Joswiak even said that the Cupertino giant is neutral about seeing third-party software running on its handheld, and that no engineer there will write code with the clear purpose of overriding somebody else’s software. However, if that does actually happen, Apple cannot be responsible for the outcome.

That sounds like a blessing from Apple, but we’ll see what AT&T has to say about this…