Over the weekend there were some reports that WiFi+3G iPad 2’s would be locked to a specific carrier after people read on the Canadian Apple site that “the iPad model you purchase is specially configured to work with either Bell, Rogers, or Telus.” It turns out that this wordage, whilst technically correct, is very confusing in that whilst the iPad is initially configured to work with a specific carrier, it can be reconfigured to work with other carriers at any stage.
This has been confirmed by a number of people from iPadinCanada to TUAW that have all confirmed from a variety of sources including Rogers Wireless, Apple Experts and Apple Support that you can swap SIMs and carriers with the iPad 2. The only issue (a very minor one) is that the iPad will need to connect to iTunes after the SIM has been swapped to download the new carrier settings, which is required for the 3G service to be usable.
So to be totally clear to all those interested, the iPad 2 is not carrier locked, rather Apple has just over-simplified the information it provided, because you can indeed reconfigure the iPad to work with another carrier with a simple SIM swap and iTunes sync. The one caveat to all this is of course the Verizon (CDMA) iPad 2 which will not be able to switch to any carrier using a GSM network because it does not contain a 3G chipset compatible with GSM networks.
[Via TUAW]
