iPhone (unlocked) activation

[shmideo]

Hi

Hope somebody can help as I'm starting to tear my hair out.

I purchased my friends UK 4S as he recently upgraded to a 5. He is on the O2 network and he had it unlocked for me. O2 sent him an email saying to activate just put the other provider sim in and connect to iTunes. So when I got back I inserted my spanish Movistar sim and went through the restore procedure, but iTunes keeps saying :

"The SIM card inserted in this iPhone does not appear to be supported.
The SIM card that you currently have installed in this iPhone is from a carrier that is not supported under the activation policy that is currently assigned by the activation server. This is not a hardware issue with the iPhone. Please insert another SIM card from a supported carrier or request that this iPhone be unlocked by your carrier. Please contact Apple for more information."

I don't know what else to do except maybe borrow someones UK sim and try to activate that way? Spent the whole of today trying to activate it. My sim works fine on my original phone.
I still have his old sim with me and tried it with that also.

Thanks

 

[kch50428]

Does your provider support iPhones that they sell? It could be that for some unknown reason - your provider's SIM has a compatibility issue with the iPhone and getting a replacement from your provider will make things work.

 

[shmideo]

Well my wife actually got an iPhone 4 a few weeks ago in the UK except that was on Orange but unlocked. We're both with Movistar and her sim worked first time when I activated it. That gives me an idea, maybe I could try activating my phone with her sim?
I had an unlock code from Orange for the iphone 4, but with O2 I don't need one as per the I got from them and the phone is defo unlocked.

Thanks

 

[shmideo]

Tried everything and always the same in iTunes, "The SIM card that you currently have installed in this iPhone is from a carrier that is not supported under the activation policy that is currently assigned by the activation server." Even tried a live UK sim which I borrowed for a few minutes. Nothing works, so what is going on?

 

[kch50428]

Could be that the lock to the original provider is still in place... there are places on-line you can put in the device's IEMEI and get a lock status... try one of those.