Oi to Sell Unblocked GSM Handsets

Brazilian mobile operator Oi plans to start selling unblocked GSM handsets this week, the company said in a statement.

In theory, users can buy these handsets and activate them with a SIM card from operators other than Oi.

Furthermore, existing Oi subscribers can take their blocked handsets to Oi's points of sale to have them adapted for use with SIM cards of other GSM operators free of charge, the statement said.

Oi believes that customers will no longer accept blocked phones, since any operator's main interface with the client is the SIM card, not the phone itself, Oi director of sales João Silveira said.

However, analyst Thomas Abreu at US consultancy Pyramid Research says that the impact of selling unblocked handsets is likely to be marginal.

"Unblocking handsets is pretty easy to do. It seems they are officializing something that is already happening [under the counter] in Brazil," Abreu told BNamericas.

Nonetheless, major local retailers such as Casa, Ponto Frio and Lojas Americanas are interested in selling unblocked handsets, newspaper Valor Econômico reported.

Other major mobile operators Claro and TIM Brasil still intend to sell only blocked handsets for the time-being.

Brazil's largest mobile phone company Vivo offers GSM handsets that operate on a different frequency to Oi, Claro and TIM and are not compatible with the other operators, the newspaper reported."

Posted to the site on 24th May 2007