Removing region SIM lock (EMEA) from iPhone 6s
I've seen posts here about this from a couple years ago, but no clear solution. Some iPhones appear to be tied to particular regions and blocked elsewhere, even though there's no SIM lock applied by an individual mobile provider. This thread includes an entry (by spire88) that seems to describe the issue:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7083598
In my case I have an iPhone 6s, bought "unlocked" from a secondhand dealer in Germany. It accepts SIM cards from two independent European providers (Vodafone, and Lebara on the Telekom network), but for U.S. SIM cards, it gives the standard locked error:
"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."
I did an IMEI number search myself and also confirmed with Apple support that the phone is locked to "EMEA Service" (Europe Middle East Africa region) and not to any provider that I can request an unlock from. Vodafone (the service it was used with in Europe) says they haven't locked it and therefore can't do anything. Apple support said they can't do anything about it either. I hate to buy a new phone when I have a perfectly working one that just needs to be unlocked, but I can't identify anyone who has the ability/responsibility for unlocking it.
Has anyone resolved this? Do I just need to keep calling Apple to get to someone who can actually release the IMEI on this phone? Thanks for any suggestions.