Long-term carrier lock-in could soon be a thing of the past in America after the FCC proposed requiring telcos to unlock cellphones from their networks 60 days after activation.
FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel put out that proposal on Thursday, saying it would encourage competition between carriers. If subscribers could simply walk off to another telco with their handsets after two months of use, networks would have to do a lot more competing, the FCC reasons.
“When you buy a phone, you should have the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier you want and not have the device you own stuck by practices that prevent you from making that choice,” Rosenworcel said.
Carrier-locked devices contain software mechanisms that prevent them from being used on other providers’ networks. The practice has long been criticized for being anti-consumer.
is that some american problem i’m too euro to understand? we got rid of this anticompetitive shit in early 10s
Yeah, the less civilized parts of world still do carrier locking to act as an impediment to switching carriers without also giving up your phone or paying a ransom fee.
Which is why I’ve been buying nothing except OEM unlocked devices since 2016 I Payful price for them, but I don’t have to worry about leaving my carrier Whenever I want and I don’t have to be on extremely expensive cell phone plans either. There is nobody else in my entire life that pays less for cell phone service than I do and I only know one person who pays the exact same and that’s because we are on the same plan on our own accounts. Literally, everybody I know in my life pays about four times what I do for cell phone service.
I am 40 and never had a phone bill to date! When I started working in a real job I was 22 and at that time cell phones were still not 100% a necessity. My job gave us a blackberry so I never had to worry. Crazy enough, I’ve been with this job for 18 years now and the job doesn’t seem very secure these days so I opted to purchase a phone directly. I traded in my old work phone for a new Samsung and got a top of the line for like $400. I signed up for Google voice and got a free number and use my work phones hot spot if I go out to use it just as any other phone for the last 3 years now. Only issue I have is hot spot is battery intensive, and some accounts don’t allow mfa with free voip numbers but whatever, free is awesome.
Yup. I can get away with prepaid 1GB/month for 3€ because I’m almost always near Wi-Fi and don’t really need to use anything bandwidth when I’m not.
I also find it wild how some people will get an expensive contract that comes with a “free” phone, but then don’t switch to an equal but cheaper contract (without a “free” phone) when the contract term expires, or at the very least renew the term so they get a new phone.
I’ve just been buying phones a model or two behind the latest generation. Bonus points for a refurbished phone. Saves a ton of money and they’re usually not much less capable than what’s new.
I’ve had that freedom for the entire duration of the existence of smartphones, in the USA. I buy my phones with no contract, at discounted prices, then I flash them with custom ROMs to improve everything, and I use no contract cell phone service. Since about 2007, that is.
In the US, almost no one buys their phones outright. They “lease to own”. Anyone whe does buy their phone outright can just buy the unlocked ones.
So I’m not sure what this rule would actually change. You’re already not Carrier locked if you bought your phone. You’re only Carrier locked if you lease it.
The big fuck up was eliminating competition by allowing t mobile to buy sprint. Too many pieces of shit were in charge 2016 to 2020.
I know lots of Americans who buy their phones without those stupid contracts. It’s not uncommon at all. I have never have a phone on a contract.
In your circle maybe, I’d love the statistics on this though because I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority are paying for their phones on installment through their carriers.
I’ve had a couple. The issue is that you don’t save any money on their service if you have your own. So it’s basically “you can pay us $70 a month and buy your phone yourself, or you can pay us $70 a month and have this phone under contract for two years that we’ll give you.”
I’m the only person I know who buys their phones unlocked. I think a lot of people rely on the store where they buy the phone to set it up and get all their stuff transfered over. Just getting a new phone in the mail is a recipe for disaster for like a solid 60% of the US population.
Sprint would have failed without the merger and we would have had three carriers anyway so it doesn’t matter whether they merged or not and in fact it’s probably better that they did because it caused T-Mobile’s service to improve dramatically since then. I knew friends who had T-Mobile back in 2012 and it was a joke. I had T-Mobile in 2016 and it was only okay.
Not always true, I bought a smart talk phone for my kid and the phone was paid in full at the time of purchase. It’s still carrier locked 5 years later because they say “it wasn’t in service for x amount of time and therefore isn’t eligible”. I even reported this to the FCC, opened a case, and they did fuckall and closed the report.
Did you have it active for 2 years? I’ve never had an issue before. Only done it like twice, though.
The merger is still something that I’m 50/50 on because it made T-Mobile’s service so much more reliable, and iirc Sprint was genuinely struggling.
It still sucks that Boost isn’t going anywhere
Sprint was genuinely struggling.
They were on the verge of bankruptcy, really the 2 options were
-
Let T-Mobile (a distant third competitor to the big 2) buy them
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Let sprint die, the big 2 buy large chucks of sprint anyways for pennies on the dollar post-bankruptcy and make their distance from T-Mobile even bigger.
If you need another reason, AT&T was very against the deal, so you KNOW what they think is bad is probably actually good for consumers
I wonder what the percentage is these days. Almost everyone I know bought their phone outright.
And I’m on the opposite side of that. Lol everyone I know just does the pay as you go 0% Apr option usually.
Europe (Germany specifically) has their own problems with carriers though.
When you notify them that you’re cancelling your service, you still have to pay for 3 MORE full months of service after that. Even if you’re in the military and ordered to move. That’s a long time.
This 3 month period mandatory cancellation notice doesn’t change even if you’ve been with them for 2+ years.
For US carriers, once you’ve been with them more than the initial 2 years, you are pretty much able to cancel whenever.
I don’t really see why people are against it, personally I never buy locked devices but they are usually a chunk cheaper and there is always an option for a locked device.
If telecoms were making certain phones exclusively locked (as in not selling unlocked phones) it would be a problem. But rn it seems that it is an easy way to save money if you like a carrier.
okay but you end up paying more - if it was just normal data plan and cost of phone it would be even, but there’s also something paid to middleman that provides something that is effectively credit and extortion services like simlock and some legal thingies, it might have smaller downpayment but it’s not this, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
this is on top of various security and privacy implications of using a phone which you can’t legally reflash
In Denmark you get two options, you can buy an unlocked phone with cash. Or purchase a subscription with it, and the provider gives you some incentive for it. The subscription is locked for 6 months which is the max by law.
If I buy a phone with the subscription, the discount means you would usually pay 80% of the phones value.
That locks you to a subscription for 6 months that is usually more expensive than the other offers out there, but the difference doesn’t make up for the reduced price of the phone over the 6 month period.
So you are actually saving money, as long as you remember to switch to a cheaper subscription after the 6 months pass. The telecom of course hopes you don’t, and that’s their incentive for taking a hit on profit in the short term. It buys them marketshare.
Boots theory doesn’t really apply because it is the exact same phone/hardware. Plus most people don’t really care about reflashing their phone.
As for the privacy stuff I don’t really know much about it in the context of locked phones so I’ll take your word for it.
The problem is that you don’t get to have a cheaper plan whether or not you own your own phone. Same monthly cost if you get their free phone under lease, or if you bring your own phone.
If you buy your phone unlocked, you can get Red Pocket which is extremely cheap for service compared to most post paid plans. You can get ~5gb data and unlimited everything else for 20 a month on AT&T. And then if you go to Europe you can just buy a cheap Sim while there and pop it in.
If you’re not picky about the phone, I have gotten sub 300 USD phones for the last 2, first lasted 4 years and I’m about 6 months into the second. Honestly there’s not much I feel like I’m missing, except spending way more money.
OK, now ban bootloader locking next.
Oh there’s a reason. Hotspot bypass being a big one I’d wager, the other being making it significantly harder to avoid ads
I sent the FTC a letter asking them to look into the practices of bootloader locking. They did they they would consider looking into it
How did you go about doing that? I wanted to ask them about being able to replace the primary bootloader, including signing keys for any device that a user has paid for, which is a step above bootloader unlocking.
Kind of like installing coreboot or libreboot on a PC/laptop.
…on OEM unlocked devices that you buy upfront and pay full price for. Buy one second hand? Fuck you. Get one through a carrier? Fuck you. Get a gift from a family member who has upgraded? You guessed it, fuck you.
“Verizon agrees that the FCC should consider the merits and trade-offs of handset unlocking requirements,” Verizon spokesperson Rich Young told The Register, though that support is conditional.
Screw verizon with an acid covered cactus. What possible “merits” are there to locking a device down for anyone but the companies selling the phones? Rich Young can go kick rocks.
I will not buy a phone through a carrier, I will not buy a phone with a locked bootloader. Period.
I am done with anticonsumer bullshit.
With removable batteries is that there is actually a legitimate reason for getting rid of them, in that it’s much harder to waterproof a device with a removable battery.
I’d still like to see the option available, but I can at least understand why it’s not from a practical standpoint. The only reason carrier locks exist is to increase the cost of change for the end user, making them less likely to switch providers.
I can see two sides to this:
Removable batteries are great, if you want longevity for a phone, and don’t mind sacrificing water resistance.
On the other side of the coin:
Removable batteries have more potential to lower water resistance ratings.
I think more manufacturers should give the choice of a model with a removable battery.
Don’t worry. With SCOTUS overturning Chevron this won’t stick. /s (in case it’s not obvious)
Thank fucking God. It never should have been a thing ever.
