[ale] [OT] White House Petition to Legalize Mobile-Phone Unlocking

[Brian Mathis]

Why should you need to ask permission to unlock your phone?  You paid
for it.  If you want to break the contract that's fine, but you would
be subject to a termination fee which should cover the subsidy.  And
since most contracts already have large termination fees, they can't
argue that it's about that.

Worse is that the phone is still locked after the contract is over.
If I want to sell my old phone, I need to hope that the phone company
will give their blessing, and many have rules that you must have an
active account, it must be in good standing, etc... in order to unlock
it.  This is *after* you have paid off the contract and probably
signed onto a new one with a new device.

The only reason is to increase the friction for you leaving for
another carrier, and that is anti-consumer and can only happen in an
oligopolistic market.


❧ Brian Mathis

P.S. Why does my phone bill not go down after I have supposedly paid
off the subsidy?  Because the prices of non-contract phones are
inflated on purpose as an incentive to sign a contract.


On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 11:44 AM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
> Or we can just purchase unlocked phones. There are lots of choices. Nobody forces anyone to buy a subsidized phone, though the fact that cell plans do not include a BYOD discount is a problem.
>
> Last fall, I contacted t-mobile to get a locked phone unlocked prior to an overseas trip. About 5 days later an email arrived with the unlock code. No real difficulty at all, except the wait.
>
> Remember when cell phones were a convenience?
>