Survey: All Cell Phones Should Work on Any Network

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Wouldn't it be interesting if all cell phones worked on all networks? That would mean the biggest selling point a provider would have is customer service and package deals? Heh, good luck with that. :D

According to the nationwide poll of cell phone users, 73% of respondents said they would support a government rule that requires handsets to be compatible with all U.S. cellular services. Smartphone users were even more solidly behind this idea, with 81% of these respondents supporting such a rule. And 88% of respondents said all phone should work with all networks.
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Steve said:
Wouldn't it be interesting if all cell phones worked on all networks? That would mean the biggest selling point a provider would have is customer service and package deals? Heh, good luck with that. :D
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yes this would be a great thing. no longer will phones be locked to their providers! this would be perfect.
 
How would that even work? Unlimited minutes, data & with who? which provider? Whoever picks your call up first? Sounds whacky, lets do it !!
 
Of course all phones should work on all networks. There is no reason for the technical limitation with current technology. It's complete bullshit just like everything else to do with cell phone service.
 
It just means everyone needs to use sim cards. Which would be nice anyway. It is how they do it in the rest of world which is why Tmobile used them in the US. With sim cards the card tells the nextwork who you are and what access you have instead of a flashed eprom chip on the phone.
 
Dantrax said:
How would that even work? Unlimited minutes, data & with who? which provider? Whoever picks your call up first? Sounds whacky, lets do it !!
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I don't think you get what they are suggesting. The suggestion is that you should be able to buy ANY phone (ie iPhone) and use it with any provider that you purchase a plan with. Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T, etc. Not that your phone will work with every network all at the same time.
 
Dantrax said:
How would that even work? Unlimited minutes, data & with who? which provider? Whoever picks your call up first? Sounds whacky, lets do it !!
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No, it means that when you switch carriers, you would not have to buy a new phone, and all of its features will work independent of the carrier.

It would also stop things like what happened with the Galaxy S, of course, we probably wouldn't have as advanced phones as we do now...

Think what this would have done for Apple. Instead of the iPhone being tied to At&t initially, imagine the 1st week/month sales if anyone on any carrier could've purchased an iPhone without changing who they were with.
 
Yes. The fact that the Galaxy II is coming out but it doesn't support the network I plan to use is disheartening to say the least. Will have to wait for a Galaxy S II "4G" or whatever.
 
The only reason why something like this would fly in this country is there would be no reason for the carriers to levy any kind of ETF, since there wouldn't be much incentive to subsidize a phone. If they did, you would probably have to agree to some insane contract, like 3 or 4 years, or they could do the right thing and make it worth your while to get service from them. Oh well, one can dream.
 
Damn no edit. I meant wouldn't fly

(33 seconds between posts... Folding@home Team 33! I get it now!)
 
maxius said:
yes this would be a great thing. no longer will phones be locked to their providers! this would be perfect.
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From what I understand, the iPhone 4 already does this. Well, you'd probably need to do something with the radio firmware to make it work on CDMA and GSM.

Wouldn't be surprised if a number of cell phones have the ability, just disabled.
 
My question is why 20% of people didn't think that this was a GREAT idea. Perhaps cell company employees or stock holders I guess. I HATE the device lock in.
 
Yeah I gotta say most european countries Ive been to are already like this.
 
I would also support a law like this, and really dont understand how cell phones got so large a customer base without something similar already being passed. FCC should have suggested this years ago!! My guess is that lots of people at the FCC get quite a few "perks". Which mainly upsets me because I am not able to participate. :(
 
JMccovery said:
The only reason why something like this would fly in this country is there would be no reason for the carriers to levy any kind of ETF, since there wouldn't be much incentive to subsidize a phone. If they did, you would probably have to agree to some insane contract, like 3 or 4 years, or they could do the right thing and make it worth your while to get service from them. Oh well, one can dream.
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Good, maybe people will flock to prepaid services, the way a phone should be. Where you pay for the service instead of a high interest loan. The telecoms deserve to make less money. I mean it's not like the telecoms bother to reinvest in their infrastructure anyway. They mostly hoard the money and buy out competition with their profits anyway.
 
tmobile unlocked my phones when they gave me the boot years back.

I don't think other carriers do that, and it's why I am kinda sad to see t-mobile get gobbled up by ATT, whose customer service sucks balls.
 
Pretty much, the standard prices on a lot of phones (especially low end smart phones and feature phones) are vastly inflated by the carriers. The Optimus for example is free with a 2yr contract, but the no contract or replacement price is like $399. The same exact phone on Virgin is $200, which I'm sure they are still making a pretty decent profit off of. It really would have been nice if they were forced to allow activation of that prepaid phone on any network though. I'd be gone from Sprint in an instant if I could use my Evo on Verizon, which is exactly why they pull that crap.
 
drakken said:
It just means everyone needs to use sim cards. Which would be nice anyway. It is how they do it in the rest of world which is why Tmobile used them in the US. With sim cards the card tells the nextwork who you are and what access you have instead of a flashed eprom chip on the phone.
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What what!? American phone don't have sim cards?! What kind of stone age bullshit is this?
 
We would need to all be on the GSM network for this to work, or that all phones would need to be dual band, CDMA and GSM compatible.
Also, if 2 people are talking on cell phones, the one who initiates the call should be charged minutes and not both parties.
 
Hypernova said:
What what!? American phone don't have sim cards?! What kind of stone age bullshit is this?
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CDMA ones don't, and even ones that do are still carrier locked in nearly all cases.

Dual band would be required until everyone was on a worldwide standard, but dual band phones have been around for a long time though, both Verizon and Sprint have them.
 
*yawn* This is something most countries don't have to put up with, where I can easily buy a phone from Carrier A, dump in Carrier B's SIM card and it'll work nicely.
 
Perhaps the spread of LTE will help this somewhat, where all the American carriers are migrating towards this standard in the future.

Also, I've realized working at VZW that American customers at least are extremely cheap. I dunno about European, Asian, etc. cell phone customers. They don't care about contracts, phones being locked down, etc as long as they can get the phone for as cheap as possible.

I sure wouldn't mind paying full retail for a phone if I know I had no contract to bog me down and I can take it to any carrier I want. But most people balk at the $400+ price for smartphones especially.
 
I am sure that a large portion of the people responding to this survey in favor of unlocked phones have the following misconceptions -

- do know the price of phones in countries that do not use the carrier subsidized model
- the current phone pricing model will remain the same even without phones being locked to a carrier

The reason carriers adopted the current model is because they realized that most North American customers are in fact lured in by an attractive and/or cheaper phone, and prefer lower up front costs and smaller payments and do not factor in long term total costs.

People also tend to respond much more in self interest without considering repercussions in these surveys I bet. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority would respond in favor to survey saying that smart phones should be free without contract, phones should not be carrier locked, only outgoing calls and texts should be charged, and monthly prices should be lower.
 
heatlesssun said:
My question is why 20% of people didn't think that this was a GREAT idea. Perhaps cell company employees or stock holders I guess. I HATE the device lock in.
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Because the answer to problems is not always "let the government deal with it",
 
drakken said:
It just means everyone needs to use sim cards. Which would be nice anyway. It is how they do it in the rest of world which is why Tmobile used them in the US. With sim cards the card tells the nextwork who you are and what access you have instead of a flashed eprom chip on the phone.
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Curiously, what's stopping you from using them? Doesn't your phone companies provide them too?

Phone companies do lock down some of their phones. But most of their clients uses the sim card. We go to a phone store, buy a phone, and go to a service center for the phone company nearby and buy a sim card from them. I'd have thought your phone companies also have sim cards :confused:

@limitedaccess

The thing about this system is that phones have shorter lifespans. In six months, a new phone model comes out, it gets bought, and the previous phone is sold to help pay for it.

My own phone was $300.00 new, but i bought it for $250, 2 weeks old and barely used because the owner got a different model almost right after. This is normal and i didn't even have to look far.

Warranty claims are not an issue for 2nd hand stuff, as long as you make sure to get the original receipt as well. Physical stores honor whoever has one of their receipts (so do NOT lose it!). Each manufacturer also has a service center at one of the malls and you just bring the original receipt with you if your phone needs maintenance. So yes, warranty is 100% transferrable.
 
BTW, i am not in the US so i don't really have a clear picture of how your system works.
 
heatlesssun said:
My question is why 20% of people didn't think that this was a GREAT idea. Perhaps cell company employees or stock holders I guess. I HATE the device lock in.
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Even if a law like this would result in a better world, I think it is immoral to force private citizens to do something against their wishes to benefit "the greater good."

Just don't bitch when "the greater good" comes knockin at your door for whatever the philistine mob thinks is a good idea at the time.

Liberty means the ability for non-government people (individually or collectively) to own property and to decide how to use that property in a manner that the owner deems most suitable.
 
Everyone should look up LTE and how many carriers globally are adopting it (almost every major player). The major limitation right now is that so many companies are using different technologies. CDMA, GSM (850,900,1800,1900). Once everyone switches to LTE in the following years it will naturally turn into what is being described.
 
It'd be nice if government stepped in to certain areas. Like how the Korean government stepped into their cell phone industry and told them, all phones must be able to use the same chargers. I never had to carry a charger with me. I'd just hook it up to a friend's charger if I needed to.
 
Sly said:
BTW, i am not in the US so i don't really have a clear picture of how your system works.
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Obviously.

USA has three types of phone network. GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile), CDMA (Verizon, Sprint) and IDEN (Nextel which is now part of Sprint). Those are just the technical reasons for phones to not be compatible with competing networks. There's also carrier lock-in. The thing with American consumers (well, USA consumers) is that they are accustomed to:
#1 being cheap
#2 having monthly payments
Thus, most people go with subsidized/free phones and the 2 year contract. Companies do the contract and phone lock-ins to retain customers because they get those customers by giving out phones.
 
Been in 4 other countries. They all do carrier lock-ins with subsidized phones. Now the phones themselves aren't always locked in to that specific carrier. So it's possible to just buy a phone and use it elsewhere.
 
1 said:
Even if a law like this would result in a better world, I think it is immoral to force private citizens to do something against their wishes to benefit "the greater good."

Just don't bitch when "the greater good" comes knockin at your door for whatever the philistine mob thinks is a good idea at the time.

Liberty means the ability for non-government people (individually or collectively) to own property and to decide how to use that property in a manner that the owner deems most suitable.
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Just like in Korea, where limited monopolies have resulted in all kinds of mob rule where people just bash each others' doors down and lynchings as a direct result of the government forcing telecoms to compete with each other. You can't even go ten feet without someone forcing their greater good down your throat in that country.

They should how empowering and comforting it is for every consumer to have prices and services dictated by the Communications Collusion Cabal that we have in the U.S. I, for one, am glad the government keeps its nose out of the telecom business.

It's a Constitutional right to have the freedom to be forced to pay exorbitant phone and data rates!
 
Not to mention, how all the mandated competition has lead to a huge boom in technological advances. Fuck that. I'm much rather we still be stuck with phones like the Motorola Razr.
 
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