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Lawsuit Over AT&T's iPhone Exclusivity Gains Class Action Status

rwilliams said:
Did it ever occur to you that Americans who travel or work outside of the States might want to use their unlocked GSM phones on international GSM networks by switching SIM cards? If someone who has fulfilled their contract with AT&T wants to travel to Europe and use their iPhone over there, they can't because Apple stupidly refuses to unlock a phone they've fully paid for. Your line of thinking is extremely small and limited. As I said, there's a whole world outside of AT&T and T-Mobile.

And just because you have no desire to use T-Mobile's EDGE network doesn't mean that others feel the same way. They have another carrier that is an option, but Apple & AT&T won't allow customers to use that option, despite the fact that their contracts have already been fulfilled.
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It is actuallly a lot worse.
When I'm travelling abroad I like to use a local SIM to get a better rate.
However, once I fulfilled the contractual obligations with a subsidized iPhone, I also don't appreciate that AT&t requires a data plan for my iPhones even if I never use their data plan. I was willing to sign over my Family Plan over to AT&T but they insisted that any "Smart Phone" needed to subscribe to a Data Plan even if it would never be used on these phones. I consider this extortion. So you cannot get a regular voice only plan on an older iPhone???
 
You produce the phone. I buy it, then I SEPARATELY choose who I want to provide the service. That's 100% the ONLY way it should be.
 
shanmugam said:
that how it is everywhere, even some communist country (eg singapore, hong kong, ..._ are better than USA! :p
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Singapore is not a communist country. It is more capitalist than the USA, except they avoid the excesses. And Hong Kong is and always has been capitalist, except that it isn't a country :D


oliversl said:
How bad can this lawsuit go? I ask because I'm not a lawyer. The word "class action lawsuit" does not look good on any company :(
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Anyone can sue. Any perceived injustice affecting many people in identical ways would become a "class action lawsuit". Lawyers could start a class action lawsuit about the white iPhones coming later, because (1) anyone can sue about anything, for example over not being able to buy a white iPhone, and (2) clearly this suit, no matter how frivoulous and pointless, would deserve class action state because the matter affects 250 million Americans.

"Class action lawsuit" means nothing. The first real hurdle that the suit has to pass is to prove that if all the facts they claim are true then Apple would have a case to answer (which is doubtful), and then they would have to prove that the facts are indeed true.
 
jamesryanbell said:
You produce the phone. I buy it, then I SEPARATELY choose who I want to provide the service. That's 100% the ONLY way it should be.
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You made me blow soda through my nose. How in the world would you use your iPhone on any network that it is incompatible with?? That;s like insisting you should be able to run your narrow-guage railroad engine on any train track you see as well as any road, cow track or interstate.

The reason other countries can move their phones from one service to another is that they don't have 4 or 5 incompatible cell systems...just one (and a faster one at that).
 
jamesryanbell said:
You produce the phone. I buy it, then I SEPARATELY choose who I want to provide the service. That's 100% the ONLY way it should be.
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^^THIS^^

I've been using a HK version 3G for the past 3 years, all over the world. They come unlocked from Apple because you can't legally sell carrier-locked phones in HK (and quite a few other countries).

The upfront cost is higher, sure. But total cost of ownership? I pay less than $20/month for voice and data. I've never seen customers get screwed by big telcos as bad as they do in the US. But I guess supporting the rights of consumers as opposed to giant corporate leeches makes me a pinko commie? :)

Oh, and whoever used the analogy of switching railroad gauges, the iPhone supports plenty of different carriers frequencies. It's a crap system anyway, if the FCC had forced mobile telecommunications standards like they do in Europe or Asia we wouldn't have this conflicted mess of different carriers and incompatible devices.
 
spazzcat said:
Yes and no. Its more to do with unlocking your phone after your two year contract is up. And most likely this will be settled by doing just that, unlocking the first iphone.
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That in my opinion would be the perfect remedy to this issue. When you are under contract you should fulfill your obligation. If you pay it off early or complete the contract then it is your phone to do with it what you want.
 
skellener said:
Doesn't the DMCA say it is legal to unlock your cell phone from your carrier?
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Almost. One item on the interim list of exemptions to the DMCA says that unlocking your cell phone is not a violation.

Don't the cell carriers have to comply with this law by unlocking it if you wish? Regardless of whether they will charge a fee or not if you unlock, I would think they would have to comply and do it for you.
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Not at all.

It's one thing to say that it's not illegal for somebody to do something if they choose to do so. It's an entirely different beast to say that it is illegal to refuse to offer somebody help to do that thing.

Anybody is permitted to use software to remove the SIM lock from a cell phone - which they own - for the purpose of using that phone on a different carrier. The current interim DMCA exception guarantees that. However, the law doesn't say anything about anybody else being obliged to help them remove the SIM lock.
 
Krizoitz said:
This is asinine. The phone can't even WORK on other carriers because they all use different technologies and frequencies. (...) Neither ATT or Apple promised you your iPhone would work on another network after two years.
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Their promotional material stated that it operates using GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UTMS, and listed the frequencies on which it operates. That, taken with an understanding of the published specifications from the GSM Association, amounts to an explicit statement that other carriers using a suitable subset of compatible technologies and frequencies would have also been capable of using the phone, but for the SIM lock.

One such carrier in the USA which falls into that category is T-Mobile.
 
Ok, let's run with your example. When did AT&T or Apple ever give the impression that your tank would accept another nozzle? In fact, they make it pretty clear that it only works with AT&T from the get-go. To be more realistic, you're talking about people who bought a car that required a specific nozzle to fuel and hoped that other providers would provide compatible fueling options.

Winni said:
Actually, you have never heard it so wrong.

McDonald's sells their OWN Big Macs in their own "restaurants". It's not like Burger King manufactures the Big Mac and has a deal with McDonald's that you can only buy a Burger King-made Big Mac when signing a subscription with McDonald's. Also, it's not as if the iPhone can only be used once (like a Big Mac); but if you want to use it, you have to use it with AT&T (in the US) EVEN AFTER your contract with AT&T has expired because the thing won't work with any other carrier.

You want an analogy? Imagine Ford has made a deal with BP that you can only fuel their cars at a BP gas station. You buy a car and sign a two-year contract that you have to buy your gas at BP. After the two years, you discover that you can still only buy your gas at a BP station because only their nozzles fit in your tank. I think we can all agree that something's wrong with that picture - to the point that it could easily be called deception or fraud.
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I just don't understand why people are siding with AT&T and Apple on this issue. The proper analogy would be like if you were buying a car and Toyota had a special deal with one bank to finance the purchase of any Toyota. Furthermore, the bank required you to use only roads the bank owns when driving the car.

After you pay off the car and have no further liability to the bank, you should be allowed to drive on any road you want with the car.
 
pake said:
I think they said in the beginning, that they would unlock your iPhone after your contract was over. I never knew if that came to be true. If so, there would be no argument.
Does anyone know about this?
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There has never been a path to amnesty for out of contract iPhones to my knowledge. The device is a brick when and if the user dumps AT&T after their contract. I personally think that the idea of subsidized phones is completely wrong because fewer people would have phones (and their bills would go down too) but our 'screw them for as much as you can get' capitalistic society wouldn't permit that...

If we had to pay $799 for a cell phone and had cheaper monthly rates, the idea of portability would be moot. We would 'own' the device and having a provider dictate what provider we could go with would be just totally wrong. These subsidizing agreements enforce the idea that we don't 'own the phone' and are at their mercy... Plus the added benefit that less idiots that shouldn't have phones won't.

A tactic of those seeking to end the iPhone locking BS should look at the other AT&T phones and then either make AT&T unlock iPhones like other phones or require AT&T to not unlock ANY AT&T phone. I have a Treo Windows phone and it was unlocked in less than a year. I went to the UK and had no trouble getting an Orange SIMM and saving H-U-G-H money for calling back home. (Like $.05 per minute versus $1.50+ from AT&T)

Either unlock the damn phones after 6-months or a year, or forbid them to unlock ANY phone no matter how old (which is what they do with the iPhone). Expecting Congress to require phone unlocking with the massive money the industry lobbyists have to spread around is just silly. It has to come from the courts (and probably be eventually overturned by Congress)...
 
jne381 said:
I just don't understand why people are siding with AT&T and Apple on this issue. The proper analogy would be like if you were buying a car and Toyota had a special deal with one bank to finance the purchase of any Toyota. Furthermore, the bank required you to use only roads the bank owns when driving the car.

After you pay off the car and have no further liability to the bank, you should be allowed to drive on any road you want with the car.
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I think the issue is cost. IF the subsidizing contracts were nullified, people are afraid that their 'free' phones would go away. Ahh, they would go away but the monthly bills *should* go down since we aren't 'renting-to-own' the phone anymore...

I don't have a problem with paying higher amounts for a cell phone as long as *I* get to do with it what I want. To heck with this BS of treating the iPhone so different. Like, uh huh, *what other carrier is there in the US that uses SIMM's that could completely steal all of AT&T's customers?* T-Mobile? HAH!!! They suck worse than AT&T here! I just want my phone to have the ability to get cheap service in Mexico, in the UK, in Canada, in Tim-Freaking-Buk-Tu! After all, I PAID for the phone, I paid the exorbitant rates per month, *I* should be able to do with it what I want, *especially* after their contract ends.

Cell phones have gotten to be too much of a commodity item in this country IMO. Disposing of them is an ecological nightmare (same for CFL bulbs). But the AT&T's of the world have grown to be addicted to the high monthly rates they extort from their customers... END the lockup, free my iPhone!!!
 
SandynJosh said:
You made me blow soda through my nose. How in the world would you use your iPhone on any network that it is incompatible with?? That;s like insisting you should be able to run your narrow-guage railroad engine on any train track you see as well as any road, cow track or interstate.

The reason other countries can move their phones from one service to another is that they don't have 4 or 5 incompatible cell systems...just one (and a faster one at that).
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You refutation of the question at hand does not make any sense. Who has 'narrow-gauge rail road engines'? Use something that at least makes sense...

Either that or let's all pull red herrings out of our butts and beat each other senseless with them...

The iPhone locking is similar to having to take your car to the dealer every time it hiccups or farts because the dealer is the only place that can read the computer and see what is wrong. Well, that monopoly ended when the court ruled that denying other companies the ability to read the computer in YOUR car that you BOUGHT was stupid and illegal. Now third parties can read the computers in any car and your local service station can (if they have the money for the equipment) read and interpret your car's ills. Heck, now even the common man on the street can purchase their own little box and jack into their car and read their own car's computer. THAT is a far better analogy and supports the case of the people against iPhone jailing by AT&T.

Forcing your customers to have to deal with you and then requiring their device to ONLY be usable on their service *even though it has the ability to be used on other providers systems* is WRONG! Once the contract is over, at a minimum, the device should be unlocked. There is no valid reason, besides greed (stupidity?), for maintaining the lock on the iPhone after the contract ends. Well and besides people *CAN* get their non Apple devices unlocked from AT&T. I've (as I've said earlier) have done it!
 
Waah waah the free market system is so unfair!! Sue! Sue! Just to get my way then legislate it into failure so the govt can issue a bailout at my great grand kids expense!!

The un-American dream right there lol
 
I would have preferred to see a class action against the bunk 2006 iMac.
That's an actual apple screw up and we can't even get our machines fixed unless we shell out 800 bucks and even then supposedly that only fixes it for another year or so.
 
jne381 said:
I just don't understand why people are siding with AT&T and Apple on this issue. The proper analogy would be like if you were buying a car and Toyota had a special deal with one bank to finance the purchase of any Toyota. Furthermore, the bank required you to use only roads the bank owns when driving the car.

After you pay off the car and have no further liability to the bank, you should be allowed to drive on any road you want with the car.
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And I thought I did bad analogies well... At least think about it... It would be like buying a car that required Shell gasoline... Gas is gas, and requiring a certain 'brand' is just ridiculous. Granted, there are probably Shell stations all over the country that someone *could* fill up at, but locking a car to a certain brand only potentially disadvantages the driver (if there isn't a Shell station when they need to fill-up) and increases the ability for Shell to jack their prices up far above the break-even point (because a totally captive audience allows them to gouge and screw the people that can't get the exact same thing from another source)...
 
vhrocks said:
Waah waah the free market system is so unfair!! Sue! Sue! Just to get my way then legislate it into failure so the govt can issue a bailout at my great grand kids expense!!

The un-American dream right there lol
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You do realize that your comment makes no sense. Right?

A 'free market system' would require AT&T to unlock the iPhone. Think about it...
 
PinkyMacGodess said:
You do realize that your comment makes no sense. Right?

A 'free market system' would require AT&T to unlock the iPhone. Think about it...
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A free market system means the company can do what it wants, charge what it wants, your free to buy it or walk away and go elsewhere. If people used there wallets inistead of a lawyer, things would be better and cheaper... It's all about the supply and demand, you can supply it, and hope for the demand
 
Anyone ready to make a class-action lawsuit against Sprint (EVO 4G) and Verizon's Droid.


Oh wait, those phones suck. Nvm
 
So, Does this mean other phones will have class action lawsuits?

This is confusing to me. Yes, the iPhone is only available on AT&T's network but aren't any phone's that use a SIM/Mini SIM tied to AT&T or can they swap to another carrier like T-Mobile. Or, can you do the same on a CDMA phone? Maybe I'm missing something.
 
Stupid lawsuit. This is only coming to light because the iPhone is so popular and is locked to a network that has been criticized for reception issues. What about the EVO 4G? It's available exclusively at Best Buy exclusively on the Sprint network. I don't see any class action lawsuits about it, do you?
 
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