FCC Eyes Making Carriers Unlock All Phones Within 60 Days Of Purchase
FCC Eyes Making Carriers Unlock All Phones Within 60 Days Of Purchase
For decades there has been endless policy wrangling over whether “unlocking your phone” (removing restrictions allowing you to take the device with you to another carrier) should be all…
For decades there has been endless policy wrangling over whether “unlocking your phone” (removing restrictions allowing you to take the device with you to another carrier) should be allowed. Giant carriers have generally supported onerous phone locks because it hampers competition by making it harder to switch providers. Consumer rights groups and the public broadly support unlocked devices.
This is still a thing in the US?
Canada abolished that crap years ago... Phones are sold unlocked, and any remaining locked phones are required to be unlocked free of charge just by asking the Carrier.
Not a thing in the UK either, perhaps due to an EU law. It's quite nice buying a handset and shoving any SIM in.
It's only a thing if you are on some form of lease plan where you don't own it outright. Pretty much every carrier in the US sells phones on a monthly payment for the device, which usually is just the cost of the device spread over 30 months, etc. While the device is still not paid off its carrier locked. After its paid off you need to jump through a few hoops but it's honestly not too hard. I'm not sure what the FCC is hoping to accomplish here, it's a similar arrangement to leasing/financing a vehicle, where the dealership holds the title till it's bought/paid off.
There are cases other than what you mentioned where the carrier refuses to unlock. During 2021, AT&T forced a phase out of 3G and provided allowed customers to get a free upgrade phone in the process. As a prepay customer, I took the phone but jumped ship to a different carrier. I tried to get them to unlock the phone earlier this year and they refused. There was no contract/lease involved, but they didn't like that I didn't remain a customer with them for (I think it was) 180 days after that.
When shopping for phones to buy outright, I remember seeing that you can buy phones locked to specific carriers. Supposedly different carriers use some different bands and so the carrier specific version has the corresponding antenna/receiver.
It's been a number of years since I last regularly worked in cell phone repair, but some models of phones were physically made in different varieties with different antennas for different networks.
It wasn't even possible to 'unlock' those phones for other networks, short of replacing the logic board and antennas.
Why 60 days at all?
Just kidding, it’s obviously because they hope you forget to change it after two months
Good fucking luck with that now that Chevron has been overturned.
Did congress explicitly say the FCC could do that when they wrote a law creating the FCC? No? We'll say goodbye on appeals.
Of course they did, everyone had cellphones in 1934 already.
Congress wasn't stupid and made sure to mention unlocking cellphones 90 years ago.
I want my bootloader unlocked Verizon.
Not the same thing, but I agree
who even buys their phones from their carriers these days?