U.S. Carriers and FCC Come to Agreement Over Consumer Unlocking of Mobile Devices

They are so close, yet so far...two business days to respond? No, they should be required to automatically unlock phones at the end of the contract or financing period. No request should be needed, it should happen automatically and immediately.

Prepaid phones should not be locked at all, as they are not be sold at a subsidy.

Should be illegal to lock phones. AT&T doesn't do 'payments' on the phone. Been with them for years and there is not a line on the bill for paying on the phone. They sell you a phone at a reduced price in return for you agreeing to pay for cellular service for a set number of months. You own the phone and can sell it or do whatever you want with it. AT&T has no claim to the phone.


Its akin to buying a car, and the dealer welds in a special gas receptacle that will only work with their gas station. Can't buy gas where you want to.

Between the CEO saying subsidies are going away and now this announcement—not a coincidence—and given how hostile this industry is towards customers, how toothless Congress and FCC are, it makes me worry what they have planned for us.

It's interesting because the industry is hateful of Apple and AT&T for changing the model which made Apple so much money and gave most of the control to handset makers. They loved the paradigm of the networks being Kingmaker of devices and the network was the asset.

Industry insiders think AT&T were fools for the Apple deal. Yet, the reality is it turned a rapidly commoditizing industry and re-vitalized it to record profits. Before the iPhone, very few people cared about their mobile device, network coverage, or doing anything other than making phone calls. Just buy the minimum minutes I need," was all anyone ever thought—except for Blackberry email. Yes, Apple made the most by factors, but telcos made billions too while moderning their infrastructure.

macigo said:

I still will only buy unlocked from Apple. Do not buy from carriers.

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That's my plan moving forward.

How nice, the gov is going to let us unlock the phone we PAID for

advance notice

Any carrier that locks phones or tablets should be REQUIRED to disclose that at the time the device is purchased.

Locking is OK if and ONLY if the locking is clear and unambiguous. I recently purchased a full-price T-Mobile iPhone 5s and the lock/unlock status was NOT clear. It was unlocked, as I had hoped, but that was not clear and unambiguous.

theheadguy said:

Do you have a credit card? Because credit card companies stand much more to lose ($10K+) if you just walk away without paying your bill. Their business survives and thrives without holding me or anything I buy with their money hostage while I pay down my bill. Perhaps they need to hold you hostage to make sure you pay, but they don't need to do that with me.

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I have 4 credit cards (2 Golds and 2 Platinums), never carried a balance on a credit card, ever. So what exactly is your point? and why the urge for the attack?

And yes you get to walk away but your credit score gets messed up, and then you get charged a higher interest rate, would you like to pay $1000 for your iPhone? Probably not.

If you're not leaving the country, what's the point?

I used to be with at&t and had no issues getting me phones unlocked once my contract was over. Then I used my phones (2 x iPhone 4, iPhone 3G and iPhone 1, 4 lines total) on t-mobile.

But that's where compatibility ends. You can't use your iPhones on Sprint or Verizon, at least not on their Edge/3G network and I believe the LTE bands are also different between them, but I haven't tried. I also see no point of taking my phones to StraightTalk or such. Their service is not as good a t-mobile's (at least in my area) and they're more expensive.

So I don't see this as a big deal, unless you're planning to go overseas with your phone. And even then you'll have issues with CDMA devices (Sprint and Verizon) and not everybody uses the same frequencies as at&t and t-mobile do here. Unfortunately, there is no "world phone" in the current smart phone playground.

I always hate "voluntary" agreements companies make because they can change if and when the companies want. Many people don't realize that safety recalls in the US are nearly always voluntary, even for things that are clearly a health risk (salmonella, etc.).

Government does actually serve a purpose, and protecting the safety and rights of consumers is certainly one thing that governments should be doing. So while this is a step in the right direction, companies should be forced to unlock devices that consumers have paid for, it shouldn't be just if the carriers decide they want to be nice enough to do it.

Tiger8 said:

I have 4 credit cards (2 Golds and 2 Platinums[!!]), never carried a balance on a credit card, ever. So what exactly is your point? and why the urge for the attack? And yes you get to walk away but your credit score gets messed up, and then you get charged a higher interest rate, would you like to pay $1000 for your iPhone? Probably not.

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Congratulations on announcing the types of cards you have - everyone here is very impressed by you now. The problem, however, is you still don't understand that they don't need to hold your phone hostage. If you walk away with your iPhone 5S without completing your contract, they can place that ETF collection on your credit reports and it will bring down your score just the same as if you didn't pay your credit cards. No difference.

macigo said:

I still will only buy unlocked from Apple. Do not buy from carriers.

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I feel like its a waste to pay full price for the phone when AT&T and verizon are still going to charge you the same amount for plans as if you were subsidizing the phone..... If you're still going to pay the same amount monthly for plans might as well take advantage of the subsidized price no?

bigjnyc said:

when AT&T and verizon are still going to charge you the same amount for plans as if you were subsidizing the phone

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It's cheaper with T-mobile. AT&T is going to knock off $15/month according to an article that was posted a day ago. It's $180/yr less than with subsidies, so $360 on a typical contract. I know some people have been able to get early upgrades at times with contract renewal. It shouldn't be a big deal going forward.

theheadguy said:

Do you have a credit card? Because credit card companies stand much more to lose ($10K+) if you just walk away without paying your bill. Their business survives and thrives without holding me or anything I buy with their money hostage while I pay down my bill. Perhaps they need to hold you hostage to make sure you pay, but they don't need to do that with me.

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That is a complete straw man. You don't really own the phone until the contract is up when buying it through subsidies. If you don't want to deal with that, the answer is just to make a retail purchase. None of them will prevent you from doing so, and it's likely that more carriers will come out with bring your own device plans.

"those in good standing." And who's to say what good standing is.

Why aren't pre-paid unlocked immediately ?

theheadguy said:

The entire concept of locking phones is comical. Customers should pay their bills because they owe the money, not because the carrier can hold them hostage. If bills aren't paid, multi-billion dollar cellular service corporations have the same avenues to collect past due amounts as any other company, they need not keep our phones hostage.

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Yes they do but locking phones is a cheaper way to keep a customer with a carrier and avoid any third party financing of phones. The iPhone was wildly successful due to the low entry level cost of buying a unit. If there was only an unlocked phone, there is a big overhead cost getting the customer to buy it.

In fact, this is what happened to the original Mac. It was too expensive at the start. While technically superior, it did not get much market penetration. If the Mac was launched like the iPhone and, you had a two year contract with Compuserve or AOL and you could only log into that service, the Mac would have been much cheaper for someone to buy into it.

Those Apple old timers remembering the launch of the Mac can attest to this.

macigo said:

I still will only buy unlocked from Apple. Do not buy from carriers.

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Unless you have service with a carrier that offers a discount on service that is comparable to the device subsidy (i.e. about $20/month), this just puts more money in the carrier's pocket. In the US, T-mobile is the only postpaid carrier with a cost-effective discount, and their coverage is sub-standard. AT&T's $15/month discount isn't sufficient.

You could go with Straight Talk through Wal-Mart. But, data is limited and you can't tether a WiFi tablet or laptop.

thekev said:

It's cheaper with T-mobile. AT&T is going to knock off $15/month according to an article that was posted a day ago. It's $180/yr less than with subsidies, so $360 on a typical contract. I know some people have been able to get early upgrades at times with contract renewal. It shouldn't be a big deal going forward.

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Let's say you pay $200 for a subsidized 16GB iPhone. Then $100/month for service for two years. That's $2600 total.

Let's say you buy that 16GB iPhone outright for $650. Then pay $85/month for two years. That's $2690 total.

So, really, it still doesn't make sense financially to buy it unlocked if you plan on sticking with AT&T for a full two years. So I suppose you're really only paying for the convenience of being able to leave their service at anytime, at the tune of $90.

Now if you were going to go with T-Mobile, or any of those smaller cell companies that piggyback off of the major networks, then yeah, I could see why buying it unlocked could help.

Tiger8 said:

I have 4 credit cards (2 Golds and 2 Platinums), never carried a balance on a credit card, ever. So what exactly is your point? and why the urge for the attack?

And yes you get to walk away but your credit score gets messed up, and then you get charged a higher interest rate, would you like to pay $1000 for your iPhone? Probably not.

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Many misuse their credit cards and from that, generalize to hating all credit card companies. Also, there is no regulated standard of credit limits and services with credit cards / charge cards in the USA. The term "Gold", "Platinum" and even "Titanium" just has a rhetorical meaning and not much else.

In my book, you are really not a high end card holder 'til you have something the level of an AMEX Centurion card.

KylePowers said:

Let's say you pay $200 for a subsidized 16GB iPhone. Then $100/month for service for two years. That's $2600 total.

Let's say you buy that 16GB iPhone outright for $650. Then pay $85/month for two years. That's $2690 total.

So, really, it still doesn't make sense financially to buy it unlocked if you plan on sticking with AT&T for a full two years. So I suppose you're really only paying for the convenience of being able to leave their service at anytime, at the tune of $90.

Now if you were going to go with T-Mobile, or any of those smaller cell companies that piggyback off of the major networks, then yeah, I could see why buying it unlocked could help.

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t-mo is $50 per line with 500MB of fast data

theheadguy said:

Congratulations on announcing the types of cards you have - everyone here is very impressed by you now. The problem, however, is you still don't understand that they don't need to hold your phone hostage. If you walk away with your iPhone 5S without completing your contract, they can place that ETF collection on your credit reports and it will bring down your score just the same as if you didn't pay your credit cards. No difference.

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I answered your question "do you have a credit card" - do you actually read the words that you typed?

What you don't seem to understand is that there is cost for collecting and reporting unpaid debt, which could be over the price of the phone itself, so phone companies try to control that internally.

Anyway, it's moot having a civilized discussion with you because every other sentence of your responses are attacks, so let's agree to disagree

I paid for like 3 iPhone unlock services, 9 US$ each. They work just fine. Having an option to unlock it in the carrier, in a easy way(no login required) would be fine.

autrefois said:

I always hate "voluntary" agreements companies make because they can change if and when the companies want. Many people don't realize that safety recalls in the US are nearly always voluntary, even for things that are clearly a health risk (salmonella, etc.).

Government does actually serve a purpose, and protecting the safety and rights of consumers is certainly one thing that governments should be doing. So while this is a step in the right direction, companies should be forced to unlock devices that consumers have paid for, it shouldn't be just if the carriers decide they want to be nice enough to do it.

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I hope you vote, because we need more people like you.

macigo said:

I still will only buy unlocked from Apple. Do not buy from carriers.

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Yeah that's what I do from now on, I just buy the Verizon version for use on AT&T. Always gives me the option of switching carriers as well.

Am I reading that right for prepaid? One year after activation? That's nuts for an unsubsidized phone.

Well this is what I think...

T-Mobile sucks and is slow
Spring sucks and is slow
Verizon sucks and is overpriced
AT&T sucks and is also overpriced

Who ever wins... we lose. /THE-END

oliversl said:

I paid for like 3 iPhone unlock services, 9 US$ each. They work just fine. Having an option to unlock it in the carrier, in a easy way(no login required) would be fine.

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AT&T unlocks used to be $3. Many people are surprised when they see what the costs are now.

thekev said:

You don't really own the phone until the contract is up when buying it through subsidies.

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I keep seeing this, but it doesn't make sense. You own the phone after you buy it. Can you quote anything from the terms and conditions from any of the major carriers that indicates you do not own the phone immiedately after purchasing it?
What you are saying sounds more like DirecTV where you need to buy the $200 box at Best Buy to start service, but for some reason still need to return it years later when you cancel.

ppenn said:

"those in good standing." And who's to say what good standing is.

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Those who paid their bills. If you owe the carrier money, you are not in good standing. They can keep your phone locked until you pay up.