It was only a matter of time… XDA member Tharamis has just started a new thread where he started a discussion with a very interesting article from NPR (National Public Radio). The article focuses heavily on “jailbreaking” the iPhone finally becoming a legal practice. For those of you not familiar with this concept, jailbreaking is the equivalent of unlocking a cell phone to flash a new rom. This allows the user to install apps that are not “approved” by Apple. Now, this is not really of any concern to XDA, but there was another part of this article that deemed it as a breaking piece of news.

Another exemption will allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.

What this basically states is that carriers can no longer forbid you from having your device SIM unlocked (in case of GSM providers), and you should be able to unlock your device to use it with a different network provider if you want to. This is great news for all cell phone owners!

Drop in the discussion thread and participate in the chat.