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Democratic bill could force Apple, AT&T to unlock iPhone
- Thread starter EricBrian
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Not to mention that I believe every provider DOES offer subsidy-free phones. Not only is the iPhone not subsidized, even if it was the wording of the legislation doesn't say that ALL phones offered by a carrier be available subsidy-free, just that there are subsidy-free phones of some sort.
But if it didn't force Apple to sell it unsubsidized, then it wouldn't achieve anything more than move sales from an AT&T store to the Apple store.
its unsubsidized. seriously as far as anyone knows and by all that has been said, this is the truth.
if they were forced to unlock it, they might raise the price to make up for their other source of income, and thats from sharing the profits of the monthly bill with att. i would imagine that if the phone could no longer be tied to att, att would then back out of the profit sharing, and thus apple would raise the price to make up for it.
But here is the real catch. I believe that the Att contract with Apple states that they will only make a CDMA (ATT and TMobile) version of the iPhone for 5 years...they can't make a GSM (Verizon) version. Soooo even if it were unlocked they wouldn't be able to use it on Verizon, only Tmobile or ATT.
got your technologies backwards.
ATT and TMobile are GSM networks (and most of the world for that matter)
Verizon is on CDMA.
I read the link. It says nothing about requiring unlocking. Unsubsidized is not the same as unlocked. All this bill would do:
1. Require the carriers to sell unsubsidized phones
2. Offer contracts without early termination fees.
IMHO this bill will never see the light of day because the carriers already offer unsubsidized phones and prepaid or pay-as-you-go plans satisfy #2.
This is just a politician wasting taxpayer money.
I am all for a bill requiring unlocked phones, but this is not it.
1. Require the carriers to sell unsubsidized phones
2. Offer contracts without early termination fees.
IMHO this bill will never see the light of day because the carriers already offer unsubsidized phones and prepaid or pay-as-you-go plans satisfy #2.
This is just a politician wasting taxpayer money.
I am all for a bill requiring unlocked phones, but this is not it.
Just to play devils advocate....
That 20 clams a month that ATT pays Apple a month. You CAN look at that as de facto subsidy... I mean, ATT does not do it just becaue they are nice guys... and the iPhone is the only thing they have in common.
The democrats had to. The republicans were too busy grilling Roger Clemens
. But seriously, I think this is a good thing. It really is completely wrong for us to have to sign a contract and be stuck with ATT if we aren't actually getting a break on the price of the phone.