FCC rule would make carriers unlock all phones after 60 days

I don't think people realize that the US is the only market in the world where phones are carrier locked, and in fact the only market where carriers have so much power over the features and overall experience of your phone. Mobile carriers dictate that a phone has to be sold with a locked bootloader. They decide if/when the phone should get OS updates. They are the ones who fill the phone with bloatware. Up until a few years ago the phone had a more prominent logo of the cell carrier than the company that actually made it.

US carriers have used their government-granted monopolies to influence the market wayy beyond phone calls and data plans, and it's about time it should end.

This is only for the normal sense of "unlocked" as not being restricted to use with a single carrier, correct?

What about other carrier modifications to devices, like when a carrier prevents a Pixel phone's bootloader being "OEM unlocked" so that GrapheneOS or other alternative systems software can be installed?

This seems like the fair and just thing to do. Being locked into a carrier is just wrong, but I would accept that if you purchased a discounted phone through the carrier that there would be divorce penalties.

Without provisions for equipment installment plans, this would likely end financing of phones by carriers (potentially pushing consumers to higher cost mechanisms, like credit cards or other traditional credit instruments). When locked, the phone is the collateral.

Free and clear phones should be unlocked immediately.

TIL locked phones are still a thing, somewhere. Not gonna lie: That feels fairly wild at this point.

There are lots of subtle ways carriers can punish unlocked phones. I tried using an unlocked Samsung flagship with a Verizon MVNO and it never worked properly. They even told me that various features wouldn't work such as Wi-Fi calling. Had to go with the main carrier anyway, so I might as had a locked phone. If the FCC pursues this rule they need to cover all the loopholes and even then it will probably be years of malicious compliance like we're seeing from Apple in the EU app store ruling.

My device shouldn't be carrier locked at all. I took out a loan to pay for this thing. They got their money for it immediately.

During the February AT&T outage[1], my wife's phone was affected, and she had to go somewhere. I should've been able to spend $20 on a throwaway e-sim and had it working before she left the house. Instead, I had to shrug my shoulders and suggest she find WiFi wherever she was headed.

Carrier locks in today's age are leftover garbage from a dated, consumer-hostile business model that's no longer practiced. And if I default on my loan repayments, the creditor can garnish my wages.

1: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/22/tech/att-cell-service-outage/...

Here in Sweden carrier locks ended a decade ago. And what are we offered now? 24/36 months plans of subscription and a okay payment plan for a +1000 euro device. iPhone 15 Pro Max is €1330 from the major resellers. With a 2-year with 40GB/ month plan it gives you a ~€200 discount on the phone. If you're a student or senior you get much cheaper plans, and if you got the cash, it might even be better to buy the phone with cash.

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.

I wonder what this would do to the prices of phones? In particular, I wonder if iPhones would be as popular (or as expensive) if people paid the full price up front? I suspect if people paid up front for phones, people wouldn't gravitate to the latest and greatest.

I would love this. However I imagine what most people won't really think about is that if you buy a phone on say AT&t, and then you just decide to stop making payments they can just remotely brick it.

It's going to be really interesting to see how prepaid carriers cope with this. For example you can buy a fully . For example you can buy a fully . For example you can buy a phone much cheaper if it's locked to MetroPCS or another prepaid provider. Since technically you've bought the phone, them bricking it becomes a lot harder to justify.

P L E A S E

The carriers are terrible about this. I have a Samsung sitting on my desk I still cannot use because I can't get it unlocked.

For a $200 discount I had to deal with the RedPocket 1yr lock. Sort of worth it, but the "are you sure you really want to unlock" and "why do you want to unlock?" questions from the customer service were really annoying. If you pay the $, the phone should be yours.

In the end we the customers will foot the bill, no matter how the game is rigged. I see no reason for 60 days, the financial agreement between the carrier and subscriber persist no matter what.

Why 60 days? Why not zero days? If you're going to take away their extrajudicial means of contract enforcement, what's the point of this residue? The only purpose for leaving it would be to confuse the customer about whether they can unlock, and to allow companies to make the process burdensome and confusing.

The reason carriers fight to preserve this isn't for enforcement of the contract at all, it's because of the other revenue streams from unwanted intrusion by the carrier into the use of your phone. Carriers can sue for the cost of the phone. And the FCC, by allowing this 60 day provision, would be making a conscious attempt to protect carrier data harvesting and customer capture.

I get allowing carriers to lock for the length of a contract; I get not allowing carriers to lock at all. This, however, is an attempt to pander to people who think locking is wrong while still preserving the benefits that carriers get from locking. These benefits will now be delivered by jerking customers through a Kafkaesque dance of intentionally confusing bureaucracy. Unlocking becomes cancelling your gym membership or your subscription to the Economist.

Yes please. Some carrier unlocking rules are ridiculous, even if you pay off the phone. If you pay off the phone it should be unlocked immediately. Financing your phone raises some questions about unlocking, but I guess the carriers can decided to not allow you to finance your phone if you just stop paying on them.

Curious we don't see the same dickriding for carriers like AT&T that we do for Apple on HN. All of the same tired arguments of 'you can choose a different carrier if you don't like it' and 'I only feel safe giving grandma a phone that doesn't allow her to do anything outside of the warm teat of Apple' apply perfectly here.

This would be a warm welcome to the frigid waters of the phone industry. Now force the OEMs to release all radio related firmware for each phone too, and we can finally own our phones again. I'm not too old to remember completely unlocked, feature complete CyanogenMod android phones. LineageOS is completely useless without VoLTE support.

So, i'm obviously not from the US, and while i'm not a liberal anymore (For USians: here, liberal=pro-market/what you call capitalist), i do understand what free markets (in a frictionless vacuum...) bring for the consummers.

It seems to me that in the last two years, the FCC and the FTC are kinda waking up and start annoying corporation into making the markets they compete in freer.

I only get my US news from hackernews, so maybe i only have the good, and not the ugly, but even in cases those agencies lost, they made good points and seems to be pushing the US to be less corporatists and more liberalist (in the economic sense, free market and stuff you USian call capitalism)

So how those agencies fall accross party lines? Are those independant?

In my opinion a change of president/government shouldn't change the culture in those agencies, but you are a weird country (the fact that you _still_ have carrier lock proves it), is this a "risk" in your case?

This only helps the credit card companies. There definitely should be an exception to force unlocking if you are on a payment plan.

And it will make it harder for the poor and those with bad credit to get a phone.

T-Mobile for instance will let you finance a phone regardless of credit once you have been a customer for a year.

I believe that some of the MVNOs will even let you get up to a midrange phone like an older iPhone as long as you stay with them for a few months. They would only do that if it’s locked.