Back in the good old days, it was easy to pass a used cell phone along to a friend or family member. Then this happened:
In the mid-’90s, wireless companies began to place digital locks on their phones so that consumers couldn’t transfer them to a new carrier. It’s relatively easy to unlock a phone—you can download the necessary code for a few bucks. But as of January 26, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), you can no longer do this legally. The 1998 law, aimed mostly at curbing digital piracy, also outlawed cellphone unlocking, but the US Copyright Office had always granted an exemption since unlocking phones really has little to do with copyright.
OK, the exemption makes sense, seems like a reasonable solution. But wait.
The wireless industry didn’t like that—it argued that because carriers often subsidize the cost of phones, it’s not fair to let customers take their device to a competitor. The Copyright Office has apparently embraced that argument: This year, for the first time, it denied the usual requests by organizations and individuals to extend the exemption.
Read the article. This is an environmental disaster waiting to happen.
This is why one should embrace paying for cellphones. Upfront or using a separate contract (the way T-Mobile does it in the US and o2 does it in Germany).
Another bright and shining benefit of deregulation.
I have yet to own a smartphone of any kind, but when I do, it damn well won’t be a carrier-subsidized unit.
If these subsidies would really benefit the consumer in any way, I would accept that. The problem (in the US at least) is that customers rarely get even a Dollar discount on any tariff, I they bring their own phone (at least with the big carriers). If regulators do support subsidies, they should also enforce that there must be another option. They do not have to go as far as some European countries which completely forbid subsidies though.
And for environmental reasons they should also establish a pricing window for unlocking on demand once a contract has been fulfilled.
But here’s the question. Are they talking about you the consumer unlocking it via modifying the firmware etc. Or all unlocking including the carrier doing it after you finish or pay out your contract.
It was my understanding that this was just about you doing it, or services doing it behind the carriers back. But carriers can and will still unlock when the phone is paid off.
Yep. We need the ATT model of charging the same for on a subsidized contract, done with the contract, full price purchased/brought your own, mixed. If the carrier didn’t pay in for my phone why should I be paying funds they claim are for payback which is why they justify ETFs etc
This exactly. First, this isn’t new and made big news at the beginning of this year. Second, this is only for people unlocking via hacked firmware. I believe the flip side of this law is that once you are out of contract, the carriers are actually required to unlock any phone on request. AT&T has a page set up specifically for this: https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/client/en_US/
Now, it’s completely lame that carriers are allowed to lock them in the first place, but this article is making it seem that they can’t be unlocked at all, and that a used phone will be a dead end after the first user is done with it. That isn’t the case and the phones have to be unlocked at the end of the contract, so I’m not seeing the “disaster waiting to happen.”