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Check out a statement dated yesterday from the "iphone Dev Team", ostensibly a provider of iPhone-unlocking software:

Based on download numbers, the iPhone Dev Team believes that, worldwide, several hundred thousand people have unlocked their iPhones. That number continues growing every day. The removal of the lock, a bug, was a major step forward in the iPhone development. It made the iPhone free and useful to anyone, not only to those in certain countries.

Apple now announces that the next firmware update, expected later this week, will possibly break the handset of all of us free users in the World. It speaks of "damage" done to the firmware and "unauthorized access" to our own property, The removal of those firmware problems, which were built in in favor for AT&T, does not cause "damage" as they want to make us believe.

We will provide you with a tool in the next week which will be able to recover your nck counter and seczones and even enables you to restore your phone to a Factory-like state.

In the meantime we advise you not to update your free iPhone with the upcoming firmware. Wait for the next version to be fixed to work properly with your carrier and not break your phone.

Kudos to the team! Thanks to their ingeniousness, people are using the iPhone however they want to. No, I don't think the iPhone is the second coming. But if you're going to pay hundreds of dollars for a gadget, you should be able to use it with the service provider of your choice. Especially if your gadget's manufacturer is trying to label unlocking software as dangerous.

Keep in mind though that Apple, as the provider of the iPhone's warranty, will withdraw the warranty for any unit that's undergone "unauthorized" changes. That's their prerogative.