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iPhone working in Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald is today reporting that the iPhone has been hacked to work on the Telstra network. While this is not a full hack, it can only make calls. It cannot receive calls or send and receive SMS messages.

The hack was reported over the weekend by a user called ozbimmer over on the hackint0sh forum board, link. There was a video posted on YouTube demonstrating the hack, however it has since been pulled by the user.

The hack is not an easy one and it require the user to trick out a AT&T SIM card so that it registers with the Telstra network. Not a task that comes easy to most users but hopefully the first step towards and more user friendly hack.

It may seem strange that Australia is the place where this hack might originate from. However with no release date for the iPhone confirmed in Australia, though 2008 has been mentioned, and the fact that it took over four and a half years for the iTunes store to open it’s virtual doors in Australia I guess ozbimmer wasn’t willing to wait.

It is also some what ironic that Telstra was the network that was hacked, in Feburary of this year Telstra’s operating chief, Greg Winn, was reported in the media of not being impressed with the iPhone, his opinion was summed up with this statement :

“There’s an old saying – stick to your knitting – and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that’s not their knitting”

Apparently Telstra is the only mobile phone that is currently running the EDGE network, which the iPhone is designed to use and not the more advanced 3G network which Telstra’s competitors, Vodafone, Optus and 3 are already using.