This article comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; Do Not blame me if you get charged data even though you follow the steps. I cannot guarantee that you will not get charged for data use.

Now to the good stuff, if you want to jump right to the Guide then CLICK HERE otherwise continue reading.

Well it’s about time. I have joined the iPhone crowd. Surprisingly to many people, this is the first product from Apple I have ever purchased. I never bought an iPod, iPod Shuffle, or any other product from them. I just never wanted to fork over all that money for a music device that would be outdated in 6 months time. I had gotten my brothers 1G iPod shuffle (hand me down, so wasn’t a purchase) and I occasionally use it when I go to the gym. It is perfect for that, because it is small, I don’t worry about breaking it and 1Gig of music is plenty in my opinion. Anyways I also have been somewhat of a procrastinator when it comes to getting an actual cellphone plan. I have had pay as you go in the past with crappy old cellphones that I never kept on me all the time, and all my friends complain that getting a hold of me is a royal pain in the ***. So I finally broke down and signed my wallet away at ~$52 per month for three years and a nice shiny new iPhone 3G.

You must be thinking that ~$52 sounds low, and yes it is, but I didn’t get the 6GB for $30 per month. You might be thinking “You spent that much on a phone, don’t be cheap and not get the data too…”. You raise a good point but I don’t need the internet EVERYWHERE I am, and most places I am have WiFi. Plus $30 per month, for a 3 year contract is… $1080. That much money isn’t penny change, and it is totally unnecessary for my daily needs. Now if Rogers/Fido were to be reasonable and have a $5-10 per month, 2Gigs or even 1Gig, I would rethink my decision. But would they ever do something that reasonable for the consumer? Hah, I’ll stick with my WiFi for now.

I’m not going to bother showing pictures here, because the rest of the internet has captured every nook and cranny of the iPhone (3G or not). I just want to mention that the unit does feel of quality build, and I hope it would at that price. It is no cheap phone, but the good thing is, even without getting a $30 6Gig of data, the price was still $200. Granted they actually billed me for $249.99, but the sales rep said they will credit my first month with $50 off the bill, so that works out to be $200 right? Yah, yah I’m paying somewhere around ~$8 extra in taxes at $250 but hey, I’m saving so much more in the long run sans data plan.

How to Disable EDGE Data?

So my situation, I wanted an iPhone 3G, with no Data option.

My primary concern was:

How do I disable data so I don’t get charged ridiculous prices? (I’ve heard horror stories of several hundred dollar phone bills because of accidental programs accessing EDGE network data.)

Well I did quite a bit of reading on forums, iPhone (3G and not) sites, and the general conclusion is the safest method is to call into your provider and have them block EDGE data on your account. Granted I’m in Canada and the carriers in my area offer this option, I can’t speak for other cellular carriers around the world so you might be out of luck for this option. Don’t worry, not all hope is lost!

I purchased my iPhone and plan from a Fido Sales Rep over the phone. Naturally they shipped the phone to me with the receipts. However if you go to a store and buy the iPhone, it is likely to be activated on the spot, and so the Rogers/Fido Wireless representatives in the store strongly urge you to get the data plan because once the phone is activated, data will most likely start being used by the phone. There are a lot of programs on the iPhone that like to use data (Safari, Weather, App Store, iTunes, etc…). Another thing to note, I’m not sure the in store Rogers/Fido representatives can even block EDGE on your account. Anyways the point of this paragraph is to say, if you buy it in the store and you don’t get a data plan, then ask them to NOT activate the phone (SIM) and you will do this at home by calling in to Customer Care. Alternatively just skip the store altogether and get your phone and plan purchased over the phone with a Sales Rep.

Ok so I received my phone from UPS, and I made sure not to plug it into iTunes on the computer, nor even power it on. I immediately called Fido customer care. Navigating the obscure menu options was honestly the hardest part of getting EDGE data blocked on my account. All menu options seem to try and solve your problems without actually dealing with a person. ~10 minutes later I found the menu combo that got me into the queue for talking to a customer care rep (at the time of writing this article). To navigate the menus follow these steps for Fido:
*remember this was at the time the article was written, it may have changed since then.

1. Call 1-888-481-3436
2. Wait until the automated voice is done talking and asks for your cellular phone number, then enter it of course.
3. A new menu comes up press 1 for…..”Consult Modify or obtain general information on your existing Fido account”
4. Now press 2 for… “subscribe to or get more information about our services press 2″
5. “This menu has 8 Options…” it lists a bunch before getting to the 9th option, (yah 9th). “For any other option or one of our value packs press 0″. This option seemed to be the closest to what I wanted, or seemed like it may connect me to a human being, I pressed 0. EUREKA, I was put into a queue and had waiting music, never was I so happy to hear the soft contemporary tunes of elevator music.

Once I got to a representative he verified I was who I said I was. Then I told him I got the iPhone today and that I would like to make sure the SIM is activated. He checked and said it was, and also noticed that my account had no data and told me I would be charged for data use. He tried to sell me the 6Gig data plan but I politely refused and asked if he could block EDGE data on my account. He said no problem, and I gave him a few minutes. He then said that I could still use the internet in my device at Rogers/Fido WiFi hot spots. I mentioned I would just use my home WiFi router, and he wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t get charged data (I was sure I wouldn’t) but he wanted a few moments to go ask his senior technician. I was put on hold for a few moments, and then he came back and said that was fine. Good to see the Customer Service rep was looking out for the customers interests to verify that they wouldn’t get any extra charges, so I applaud them. Before we finished the call, he said to wait about 2 hours before turning on the phone and plugging it into iTunes, so the EDGE block could be 100% in place.

That was a pretty quick and painless call, and after a few hours I plugged it in, downloaded and installed iTunes for the first time in my life. Once I made an iTunes account, the phone was powered up and working. I disabled all unnecessary things on phone that might eat up battery (Bluetooth, 3G, WiFi when I’m not using it, Push/Fetch services). And the moment I was waiting for.. I click Safari and it says “Could not activate cellular data network.” I was happy, and checking Settings > General > Usage, I could see that there was 0 bytes send and received.

[Alternative, or Double Safety] If your provider refuses to block EDGE, then there is an alternative you can use. Just go to this website and there is a video on how to do it. I suggest using WiFi to actually perform it.

What it does is basically when you click the link on the webpage it loads an *.mobileconfig file which is an XML parsed file containing APN server,username, and password. EDGE network uses an APN, but it is invisible to the user on the iPhone 3G (original iPhone users have the ability to change it right on the phone I believe). But apple has an enterprise program that you can download, and it will make the *.mobileconfig file for you (meant for corporations, but still publicly available to use as well). What unlockit.co.nz has done is just made a publicly available *.mobileconfig file with some dummy username, a fake password, and a server that doesn’t exist. So this also should disable your EDGE. Really easy to remove if you decide to get data in the future as well, so go check it out.