China Gets iPhones Early, But Wi-Fi is Disabled

China Unicom will likely be selling an iPhone sooner than expected, but it will not have Wi-Fi capabilities.

The Government of China, which controls the 3 major cell phone networks in China said in the past that it objected to Wi-Fi in phones, perhaps because it's harder to sniff local packets than ones drifting through a wide-area network.

According to unconfirmed reports, China Unicom plans to sell a GSM based iPhone, but its licence is for something where Wi-Fi is blocked. As TradingMarkets.com puts it: "Apple has to cancel the Wi-Fi function without changing other components."

The good news is that, China has been waiting for the iPhone for a long time and they are finally getting it now. I just wonder how adept the Chinese jailbreakers will be at reactivating that Wi-Fi.