Carriers fight plan to require unlocking of phones 60 days after activation.

Carriers fight plan to require unlocking of phones 60 days after activation.

T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier’s network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. “If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers—not providers—who stand to lose the most,” T-Mobile alleged in an October 17 filing with the Federal Communications Commission.

The proposed rule has support from consumer advocacy groups who say it will give users more choice and lower their costs. T-Mobile has been criticized for locking phones for up to a year, which makes it impossible to use a phone on a rival’s network. T-Mobile claims that with a 60-day unlocking rule, “consumers risk losing access to the benefits of free or heavily subsidized handsets because the proposal would force providers to reduce the line-up of their most compelling handset offers.”

  • InspiringOne@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    It turns out all mobile phone service providers including the major name brands, use openbts in Ubuntu for free, and Ubuntu for free. Or that’s why they donated or no one got money, no wonder Ubuntu was popular and I don’t want to say terrorists but the Silk Road had phone service. Mobile phone service brought nothing good to these areas, and it comes from many sources or sold in stores on SIM cards. Tracfones were fine.

    This whole thing goes on through office jobs and fraud through advertising, but Apple or Larry didn’t like or have mobile phone service, and liked WiFi being available everywhere. It was fine not to use voice phone calls it just changed things. Even though it still has voice phone calls. You couldn’t even sell drugs to pay for phone service or they’d extort you in some way. When clearly everyone does something illegal, this all goes back something else.

  • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    3 months ago

    We need another flavor of the 1980s telecom antitrust. All phones should be sold 100% unlocked. All carriers should not be allowed to sell phones with custom software configurations (Verizon is the worst for this) or neutered basic band support that makes the phone difficult if not impossible to use on competing carriers. All phones should be as interchangeable as they are currently capable of. Predatory carrier financing deals should be heavily regulated. No more trapping people in multi-year financing pyramid schemes. Basic communications methods for voice, image, video, text, video call, data should be forcibly standardized on all brands.

    These companies were given a long leash, and they just abused it.