Help Center

If you bring your device to use with the Tello service, the phone must be Carrier Unlocked.

A locked phone will be restricted to use the provider's Network or SIM only.

An unlocked phone is a phone that is not tied to a carrier or a phone plan.
It allows you to move freely to choose the best provider for you.
If you're on a prepaid or pay-as-you-go plan, your phone is probably unlocked.
However, if you're on a two-year contract or something similar, your phone is probably carrier-locked until you finish paying it off.

Phones need to be unlocked before activating your Tello service and only you can confirm this with the phone carrier or phone seller. Tello cannot check if your phone is locked and we cannot unlock devices.

Unlocked and Compatible are 2 completely different unrelated requirements.
Our device checker can check for compatibility only - you must check that the phone is unlocked.

So even if you receive the "Awesome" message on our device checker, you still need to check if the phone is unlocked or not.
If you try to use the service without getting the phone unlocked from the previous carrier, then you are likely to get SIM error messages on your device and won't be able to use Tello until your previous carrier unlocks the device.