FCC proposes 60-day unlocking rule for all mobile phones
The FCC has proposed a new rule that would require all carriers to unlock all phones within 60 days of activation.
Next they should ban phone models that only support carrier specific bands
Correct. Every phone sold in us should work in us.
This would reduce waste by a lot along with 60 day unlock rule!
As of 2017, the rules in Canada have been the following:
All new devices in Canada must be sold unlocked, and carriers must offer to unlock existing phones free-of-charge
I have not bought a phone through my carrier for probably around 10 years. I always buy something factory unlocked, often a LatAm model, and drop my SIM in. GSM was designed with that kind of freedom in mind.
It doesn't surprise me how much hardware costs are tied to (and inflated by) subscription plans in the US, though.
Why not zero?
Because how else are we going to have at least some models out there for people who can't fucking afford these ridiculous phone prices without doing payment plans?
Just like health insurance that's like tied into your mobile plan. We all thought we hated when we paid for minutes, and then for when we were paying for minutes and data, how naive were we.
It seems to me that a carrier should be able to lock a subsidized/financed device until it's paid off. That makes it possible for people who would otherwise not qualify for financing to have relatively up-to-date devices.
A carrier should not be able to lock a device that's paid off for any length of time.
Nah, I disagree.
It shouldn't matter to them who uses the phone or what provider you use on it, as long as you pay them of course.
This argument may have made sense a decade ago, but phones today aren't making the generational leaps and bounds with performance every year. Even the low end phones are just fine for most uses these days.
If you're poor, and I certainly have been, you shouldn't get into these contacts that ultimately cost you more. You buy a cheap phone from last year and put it on an MVNO that's cheap
I suppose it depends on whether you think regulation should be used to dissuade poor people from buying expensive phones. That seems like a reasonable enough goal, though I don't believe that's the proper role of government.
I've always bought phones outright, used when finances so dictated. I agree that's the wiser approach.
I would generally agree with you, but in this case, Verizon has already been subject to such a rule for over a decade as a condition of the 700MHz spectrum. Verizon does offer subsidized/financed devices like the other carriers, it just doesn't SIM lock them beyond the initial period.
Given this data point, I think it's a good idea to expand to the other carriers.
Lol I thought it did not exist anymore, like in Canada (where I am)
It's essentially a payment plan here in the US. Switch to a new carrier, get an iPhone for free as long as you stay subscribed to their most expensive tier for a year. How it usually works is that the phone is sold to you on an installment plan, say $80 per month, and the "free" part of that is where they also give you an $80 bill credit each month. If you cancel early then you have to pay off the remaining balance of the phone in a lump sum.
