New FCC Chairman Tells Wireless Carriers to Unlock Cell Phones

My phone now is paid for by my work so it barely matters to me directly, but if I went out to buy a nice new smart phone for myself, and I had the balls to ask for things like a reasonable amount of data per month, I wouldn't be able to get service at a cost lower than the subsidizing plans anyway. Not on a network that's actually usable in many places.

ATT and Verizon (and a couple others) have got consumers by the balls with their pricing and plans, so fuck em, regulate it.
 
Aluisious said:
No they fucking do not. I wanted to sell my Droid X after my contract, or at least roll it onto a prepaid service. Verizon told me they weren't going to do shit. What am I going to do, hire a lawyer to unlock a $100 phone? Companies are happy to throw around the fact that they've got consumers by the balls, so I'm not weeping big tears if an actual pro-consumer regulation is proposed.
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Apologies. I had never dealt with Verizon. Sprint, ATT, and Tmobile have done it for myself and associates in the past.
 
I can see subsidized contract phones being locked until contract is up & then being unlocked, but if you pay for the phone up front it should be unlocked from day one.
 
There's no excuse to lock it even during the contract period. If you break contract early you pay an early termination fee to close the gap in phone subsidy you "borrowed" from the carrier. The lock is just an extra "fuck you" to the consumer and makes it costlier to switch carriers whether you are in a contract or not. It's bullshit that it lasted this long.

And don't give me any of that free market BS. This is a monopolistic practice and is anti free market.
 
maverikv said:
There's no excuse to lock it even during the contract period. If you break contract early you pay an early termination fee to close the gap in phone subsidy you "borrowed" from the carrier. The lock is just an extra "fuck you" to the consumer and makes it costlier to switch carriers whether you are in a contract or not. It's bullshit that it lasted this long.

And don't give me any of that free market BS. This is a monopolistic practice and is anti free market.
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Makes sense in that context. Point taken.
 
Disposed said:
If that right you are talking about is the "right" to royally fuck over customers with shitty practices then yes, fuck their rights.

What kind of person would want to defend the cell companies "right" to force locked phones on everyone? Nothing like consumers standing up for anti consumer bullshit. Theres just no logic to it.
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It's their right to set their business practices. Just because you don't like them doesn't make them illegal or even unethical. You're just reacting emotionally as a child would: "I don't care if it's your game, I WANT TO PLAY IT MY WAY!" Laws based on emotional impulses are bad laws.
 
Borgschulze said:
Locking a phone so that if you travel you have to spend hundreds of dollars on roaming fees? :eek:

Or having an unlocked phone and spending far less on fees because you have a local number.
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You can't get a roaming or national plan, or find a carrier that has a wider network?

You can buy unlocked phones, just not directly from the carriers. Will you have to spend more money? Sure. That's called paying for the features you want.
 
Lith1um said:
By contrast, we can look at the cell phone regulations in other countries where devices are actually sold carrier agnostic, free to be used on the carrier of your choice, purchased free of the carrier bloatware that the end user is forbidden to remove without rooting and voiding their warranty.

American business is about herding people into specific marketing tiers, no promoting consumer interests.
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Consumer interests that don't involve risk to their being are less important to me than the rights of business owners, especially when it comes to a market like cell phones and cell phone service, which boast some of the biggest variety of choices of any technical consumer market.
 
jpm100 said:
Take the FCC & radio. Can I plant a tower and start broadcasting. No way. Not only do I need permission, I have to prove I'd be 'responsible' according to their standards. Which pretty much means I have to have a track record in the industry or people in the industry vouch for me. Which pretty much ensures radio is a closed club. Of course they allow exceptions so they can pretend there isn't a rule.
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Take it up with the corporatist statists that perpetuate that situation. I don't disagree that the inability to secure broadcasting rights is a travesty. That's a different issue with regards to cell phones, in my opinion, because you can buy unlocked cell phones, at a significant increase in cost over all the deals the carriers offer.
 
maverikv said:
Who the hell would think you'd find an argument in a thread about this? Shills. Shills everywhere.
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I'm sorry that you dislike hearing opinions that you don't agree with. You've made that character flaw clear many times over.
 
Max Mike said:
Well you have a point, law being made/changed by fiat is a very dangerous and stupid game to be playing. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving Government regulators the power to change law because of good intention or whim creates the potential for ugly destructive abuse, corruption, and the political weaponizing of regulatory agencies (something we are seeing right now).

Having said that unlocked cell phones could increase competition (drop prices) for cell plan rates but it also may have the unintended consequence of raising prices for low end cell phone because carriers will be less will to subsidize them.
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That, and there's still going to be the issue that some people will run around with unlocked CDMA phones and want to use them on a GSM network. The thing is, people can already do that, if they want to get themselves a nice unlocked phone from Amazon or Ebay. If it were illegal to purchase or own those phones, or simply made impossible by the phone manufacturers only selling to cell phone stores, then I might agree with this ruling.
 
Stiletto said:
And it's always best that business owners have their rights taken away to give us more choice.

Because we don't have any choice in cell phones or cell phone carriers. :rolleyes:
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I work for a carrier. This is a good thing. The U.S. locks phones to keep you from changing carriers and to force ridiculous fees on you if you travel out of the country. Travel to Europe and send (or receive) and SMS, and you're likely to get charged for it. How much did your carrier pay? Answer: $0.00. Carriers don't charge each other for sms, because it's a zero cost item.

Honestly, if we weren't forced to protect your financial information, we wouldn't do it And no, I'm not joking.

What you don't understand is that we do many things that aren't in your interest an you just don't know about it. I'm not saying everything we do is to screw the customer, but if we can quietly do something, we will. If we can slip a fee in for something we will.

Some carriers won't even activate a phone that's not from them (regardless of whether it's locked or not).

The government does lots of bad things, but in this case, it's not bad.
 
Stiletto said:
It's their right to set their business practices. Just because you don't like them doesn't make them illegal or even unethical. You're just reacting emotionally as a child would: "I don't care if it's your game, I WANT TO PLAY IT MY WAY!" Laws based on emotional impulses are bad laws.
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It is actually NOT their right to set any business practice they want. But clearly you're dug in on this so there's no reasoning...
 
Lith1um said:
My thoughts precisely.

SirGold said it, "Regulation should be done with actual laws, not just threats of laws."

I do appreciate the chairman's sentiment though.

Next on the agenda should be ala' carte television programming.
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I'm good with that, but for the vast majority of people, they won't save anything by going ala carte. You'll just pay the same, or more, to get less. If you keep ESPN, your rates will definitely go up ($20-$30/month). Drop it and you might come out ahead (it really depends how much the smaller channels have to go up to make up for the subs that don't get them).

For me, i'd drop ESPN, NFL, TNN and almost every sports channel (and those are the most expensive channels). I'd probably drop Fox News (the most expensive news Channel) as well as Headline news and MSNBC (though I might pick them all up for election coverage...but probably not)

Honestly, I'd be really happy if ESPN was ala carte (it costs cable corps about as much as HBO) and NFL should be too (because honestly the only reason it exists is so the NFL can make more money...otherwise those games could be on ESPN or some other network we already have). TNN I'm a bit more ambivalent about. I don't need it, but it's relatively inexpensive given the amount of content (even if I don't watch it).
 
IMO if you don't watch sports you can easily ditch cable all together. Ala cart is targeted at the sports fans who are shackled to cable.
 
techrat said:
Protip. Carriers don't subsidize phones. YOU DO. You pay for the phone through the rate you pay on contact. Don't give me any shit about how the rate doesn't drop after your contract is over on Verizon or anywhere else. You're still paying the full subsidy price even then. If you're on contract and don't upgrade as soon as you can, you're giving carriers more profit.

Pay as You Go carriers sell phones up front for full price. So you can't even argue subsidy there.

If you're going to posit a scenario, first make sure you're even in the same reality.
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Not completely true. T-Mobile drops the rate, but they're really the exception.
 
Max Mike said:
Of course carriers absolutely subsidize the upfront cost of a phone. Of course you pay them with higher rate plans but if they do not subsidize the initial cost phones cost a lot more. Oh and many pay as you go phones are also subsidised in the same way by restricting which pay as you go plan you can buy.

Yes you should first make sure you're even in the same reality, but then you are not. And I suggest you do a google search on cell carrier subsidies, the results will back my terminology up and not your irrational twisting of reality.
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Not really. Most carriers charge you the same price if you pay full price for a phone. T-Mobile doesn't, but most do. Some others have kinda sorta countered T-Mobile, but not really (note i do not work for that company nor am I a customer).

I work for a carrier. Pay as you go or Prepaid phones are not subsidized. You pay the full price. It doesn't matter if you have an old phone that was once under contract or if you just bought the new phone (and yes, we charge FULL PRICE for prepaid devices), your price is the same. We have a lot of prepaid plans, but ultimately there's very little savings. In some cases we actually end up getting more/month.

I don't know what you do or where you work (and I'll keep my employer to myself, cause I need my job), but we discuss this stuff all the time trust me we know you're getting hosed...but the the financial guys love it. All the Engineers know you're getting screwed. Fortunately, you, the customer, don't realize it. We sometimes add fees and expect that they won't fly, but you bend over, so we leave them in (and yes that's happened many times). Nobody can believe that people like you pay (much less defend) the pricing on things like SMS or the fees to upgrade your device or activate a new line, but you do.
Look at SMS. I won't say it's 100% profit, but it's pretty damn close. If we charged $5.00 instead of 20, it'd still be very profitable. But your or a competitor floats a balloon and if it doesn't pop, then everyone raises their prices.
 
rudy said:
IMO if you don't watch sports you can easily ditch cable all together. Ala cart is targeted at the sports fans who are shackled to cable.
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Can't get HBO ala carte. And if your thing is sports, ESPN alone (and I'm not sure this would include ESPN2 et al), would run $20-$30/month. I don't see what ala carte will buy you. Your rates simply won't go down, unless your subscription will consist exclusively of ESPN and other premium stations (HBO, Showtime etc).

I mean you can get plans with ESPN for $30-$40....yes they ay be promotional, but you can talk almost every carrier down if you threaten to leave...and if that doesn't work, then just switch every year or 2.
 
Stiletto said:
That, and there's still going to be the issue that some people will run around with unlocked CDMA phones and want to use them on a GSM network. The thing is, people can already do that, if they want to get themselves a nice unlocked phone from Amazon or Ebay. If it were illegal to purchase or own those phones, or simply made impossible by the phone manufacturers only selling to cell phone stores, then I might agree with this ruling.
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Carriers don't always activate another carriers unlocked phone. Some will, some won't.
 
nilepez said:
I work for a carrier. This is a good thing. The U.S. locks phones to keep you from changing carriers and to force ridiculous fees on you if you travel out of the country. Travel to Europe and send (or receive) and SMS, and you're likely to get charged for it. How much did your carrier pay? Answer: $0.00. Carriers don't charge each other for sms, because it's a zero cost item.

What you don't understand is that we do many things that aren't in your interest an you just don't know about it. I'm not saying everything we do is to screw the customer, but if we can quietly do something, we will. If we can slip a fee in for something we will.

Some carriers won't even activate a phone that's not from them (regardless of whether it's locked or not).

The government does lots of bad things, but in this case, it's not bad.
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I understand that these things are not in the consumer interest, and I've already stated that unless it involves actual harm to the user, I consider them less important than the rights of business owners. What too many people seem to refuse to accept is that businesses do not have to make decisions in the best interest of the consumer, nor should they be forced to do so. People enter business to pursue THEIR interests, and unless those interests either involve lying to people or harming people, they should be free to pursue them, just as consumers should be free to pursue alternatives that allow them to tell the business owners to go fuck themselves.

Your carrier won't activate the phone you like? Find another carrier. There are dozens to choose from, all offering various levels of service, various levels of coverage, etc. If cell phone carriers were comparable to Ma Bell or a clear monopoly, I would agree with legislative action. Yes, I'm also aware that for many of the popular carriers, you can trace their ownership back to a few big corps. Still, the competition is fierce, and most people have a wide array of options to choose from, such that even the poor often have cell phones. That level of consumer choice and power contradicts any concerns I have about forcing companies to sell what can easily be bought from people who aren't cell phone service companies.

Honestly, if we weren't forced to protect your financial information, we wouldn't do it And no, I'm not joking.
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Considering that government agencies have sold our private information around, I've given up trusting anyone with information that has long since left my hands.
 
Disposed said:
It is actually NOT their right to set any business practice they want. But clearly you're dug in on this so there's no reasoning...
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Gee, another person that likes ruling out any opposing opinions as irrational before they face having to address them. People like you are such charmers.
 
nilepez said:
I'm good with that, but for the vast majority of people, they won't save anything by going ala carte. You'll just pay the same, or more, to get less. If you keep ESPN, your rates will definitely go up ($20-$30/month). Drop it and you might come out ahead (it really depends how much the smaller channels have to go up to make up for the subs that don't get them).

For me, i'd drop ESPN, NFL, TNN and almost every sports channel (and those are the most expensive channels). I'd probably drop Fox News (the most expensive news Channel) as well as Headline news and MSNBC (though I might pick them all up for election coverage...but probably not)

Honestly, I'd be really happy if ESPN was ala carte (it costs cable corps about as much as HBO) and NFL should be too (because honestly the only reason it exists is so the NFL can make more money...otherwise those games could be on ESPN or some other network we already have). TNN I'm a bit more ambivalent about. I don't need it, but it's relatively inexpensive given the amount of content (even if I don't watch it).
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Exactly. I'd love a la carte choices, but think about it: we'll go from $70 a month for 500 channels(read: about 6 or 7 that you actually want to watch) to channels in various tiers that will be 4.99/mo, 7.99/mo, 9.99/mo, with a minimum of probably 5 or 10 channels. You'll end up paying the same amount or more in total.

If not for internet streaming coming in and quickly making cable and satellite redundant, government action might be warranted. At the rate Netflix and Amazon Instant Video and other services are going, however, I'm pretty sure the free market will take care of this(uh oh, I just pissed off some people by daring to promote laissez-faire policies).
 
Stiletto said:
Exactly. I'd love a la carte choices, but think about it: we'll go from $70 a month for 500 channels(read: about 6 or 7 that you actually want to watch) to channels in various tiers that will be 4.99/mo, 7.99/mo, 9.99/mo, with a minimum of probably 5 or 10 channels. You'll end up paying the same amount or more in total.

If not for internet streaming coming in and quickly making cable and satellite redundant, government action might be warranted. At the rate Netflix and Amazon Instant Video and other services are going, however, I'm pretty sure the free market will take care of this(uh oh, I just pissed off some people by daring to promote laissez-faire policies).
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It's difficult to discuss with you because you're all over the place. I mean even here in your speculation you think the "free market' is going to fix the cable tv problem, yet you fail to mention that most big cable providers also provide internet service--and what are they doing recently? Oh, charging by the gigabyte. Yeah, "free market" at work there.

I mean, I get what you're saying, I really do. And in theory it sounds great (as most lib stuff does), but once you get into the real world, everything breaks down because people aren't robots and they behave irrationally all the damn time. This is why regulation is required because every human system is--wait for it--run by humans! And humans can be unpredictable and irrational, sometimes they even work against their own best interests! This is where regulation steps in, checks and balances, to promote a more stable environment.
 
Dreaz said:
It's difficult to discuss with you because you're all over the place. I mean even here in your speculation you think the "free market' is going to fix the cable tv problem, yet you fail to mention that most big cable providers also provide internet service--and what are they doing recently? Oh, charging by the gigabyte. Yeah, "free market" at work there.
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He's one of those "High Class" people. His opinion is law. More on that one later.
 
I will say it again: allowing companies to use monopolistic tactics is anti free market. A free market has low barriers to entry, and a company being allowed to throw up cockblocks like this creates an artificially high barrier to entry. So if you defend this practice just be honest. Stop calling yourself a proponent of the free market and just admit that you're a sniveling corporate apologist.
 
Wow I like this guy. Sounds like he has a "Get R Done" approach to things, and that he thinks of the people.
 
maverikv said:
I will say it again: allowing companies to use monopolistic tactics is anti free market. A free market has low barriers to entry, and a company being allowed to throw up cockblocks like this creates an artificially high barrier to entry. So if you defend this practice just be honest. Stop calling yourself a proponent of the free market and just admit that you're a sniveling corporate apologist.
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I don't think anyone here, left or right, is truly advocating a free market. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that free markets rape the hell out of consumers because it's much easier to collaborate than compete.
 
nilepez said:
Can't get HBO ala carte. And if your thing is sports, ESPN alone (and I'm not sure this would include ESPN2 et al), would run $20-$30/month. I don't see what ala carte will buy you. Your rates simply won't go down, unless your subscription will consist exclusively of ESPN and other premium stations (HBO, Showtime etc).

I mean you can get plans with ESPN for $30-$40....yes they ay be promotional, but you can talk almost every carrier down if you threaten to leave...and if that doesn't work, then just switch every year or 2.
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If you are married to HBO or any other single thing cable offers sure I guess you are stuck too, but for most people HBO isn't worth that much. I have only ever had it as a sign up bonus and it vanished when my promotion was over and I didn't flinch.

I am not going to argue that a la carte will probably not work in the end, you are right, I am just saying that is where a lot of the push for a la carte comes from. A ton of people really only need 1 channel for their favorite sport team or whatever. I would even argue in your case you only need 1 channel, HBO, but I am not sure.
 
While I love the idea of a politician/government agency head deciding to order the wireless carriers to unlock cell phones, I wonder what I kind of end user affect this decision implicates. Ideas from bureaucrats are sometimes great, but the execution of said ideas tend to do more harm than good...and we all can find one recent example of this....._ _ _ _ _ care
 
This is like the millionth time in the past 5 years that they have gone back and forth saying "unlocking phones now legal!" --> "unlocking phones now illegal!" --> loop.
 
Stiletto said:
Gee, another person that likes ruling out any opposing opinions as irrational before they face having to address them. People like you are such charmers.
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Ok. Let me break down why i am completely dismissing your opposition.

A) The notion that a company has a right to impose anything they want on consumers is 100% dead wrong and absurdly ignorant.
B) Your whole argument goes against YOUR OWN best interests. (Unless of course you own significant stock in VZW or ATT)
C) This whole mindset that imposing rules against a companies practice to protect consumers is wrong just makes me wonder what you think these agencies like the FCC exist for.

So its hard to take you seriously in here with your tons of replies trying to make a case that the government agency actually working for US for a fucking change instead of the corporations is so terrible.

Oh the fucking tyranny. :rolleyes: If this brutal dictator gets his way we might actually get to move past the 90s in cellular business practices and only be 10 years behind the Europeans. :rolleyes:
 
heatlesssun said:
You're the one going around sending PMs declaring the class of people.
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Oh, do tell... I want to hear more.

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Disposed said:
Ok. Let me break down why i am completely dismissing your opposition.
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I'm not interested in another lecture from someone who immediately addresses opposing views with snide and disdain instead of substantial response. You get as much respect as you give.
 
Stiletto said:
I'm not interested in another lecture from someone who immediately addresses opposing views with snide and disdain instead of substantial response. You get as much respect as you give.
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Oh the sheer amount of irony.:eek:
 
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