SHANGHAI, July 9 -- A NORWEGIAN hacker who gained notoriety by breaking the copy-protection code on DVDs has taken his "craft" to another level.

He said he can activate Apple Inc's iPhone without using AT&T Inc's service, Bloomberg News reported.

"I've found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without giving any of your money or personal information to AT&T," Jon Lech Johansen, 23, wrote in a July 3 post on his "So Sue Me" blog.

"The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and WiFi work. Stay tuned!"

Apple started selling the combination phone and iPod music player on June 29 in the United States.

A two-year contract from AT&T, costing US$60 to US$220 a month, is required to activate the gadget, which has a Web browser, email and WiFi capability. Apple and AT&T may have sold 500,000 to 700,000 iPhones in the weekend after its debut.

"Apple specifically designed the iPhone to work exclusively on the AT&T network," Mark Siegel, a spokesman for San Antonio-based AT&T, said on Friday.

Johansen, or DVD Jon, hacked the software on DVDs as a teenager and distributed it on the Internet.