10 Pros and Cons of Jailbreaking Your iPhone or iPad
Pro: Change wireless providers
You can "unlock" your jailbroken iPhone or iPad to go from one cellular provider to another at will, as long as they're both carriers that use the GSM wireless standard, and, sometimes, the LTE standard as well. All you need to do is change the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card. All iPhone 5 and later handsets are compatible with both GSM and LTE.
Most U.S. carriers used to lock their handsets for the life of the unit, but as of February 2015, the carriers have been required by law to unlock a phone as long as the phone is fully paid for (i.e., the contract, lease agreement or hardware payment plan has completed) and the account is "in good standing" (i.e., you have made all the payments so far).
Yet policies among the major carriers still vary greatly. Verizon now locks almost none of its handsets, and none of its iPhones, but AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile still do. Most of them require that your payment obligations have been fulfilled before they will unlock a handset, but will usually unlock a device for international travel or if the customer is a U.S. military service member being deployed overseas.
MORE: Unlocked or Carrier? How You Should Buy Your Next Phone
Unlocking won't work for older Sprint or Verizon iPhones or iPads, such as the iPhone 4 and earlier, that use the CDMA wireless standard and aren't LTE-compatible. For those, you'd have to bring your device into the desired carrier's retail store, where a technician might be able "flash" its firmware to the new network.
Things get complicated with the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. Every iPhone 4s can use either GSM or CDMA, but the CDMA radio is switched off on handsets meant for GSM networks, and vice versa. Ask the carrier if it can activate the other radio.
Meanwhile, every iPhone 5, 5s and 5c can use GSM, but only some can use CDMA as well. Beginning with the iPhone 6, Apple has made every handset compatible with both CDMA and GSM, although LTE bands may still vary among regional models.
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