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A comment on Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal Saturday in the U.S.. Parent comment

Re:Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal Saturday in the U.S. by gtr32x on Thursday January 24, 2013 @01:02PM (#5111017)
There are many people that need to travel around all the time. I am a University of Waterloo student and we have a coop/intern program that allows us to travel between US and Canada all the time if we could find a job in the States.

Every four month we will be going back and forth between Canada and US. It is a major PIA that we cannot use the phone between the two countries. Right now I am on contract under Fido in Canada and I am currently in Seattle. I am actually still paying the fees for my Fido account in Canada in order to keep my discounted contract plan. However my phone is now totally useless in the States. The only official way of unlocking is to pay Fido a premium for canceling the plan. I mean if I'm already paying you guys money while I am out of country can't I just have it unlocked? What difference does it make that I unlock now vs unlocking it when my contract is due? Even if I unlock my phone, I will still be on contract which means I must pay the fees for the contract until it ends. If I then decide to switch carrier after unlocking, you can still charge me the same fee for cancelling the plan. It simply makes no sense and it's just screwing around with people like us that need to go out of country all the time.

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Re:Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal Saturday in the U.S. by alanctgardner2 on Thursday January 24, 2013 @01:55PM (#5111347)
Maybe fido has different policies, but typically if your phone has the right radios, your carrier will let you "roam", and they charge you for the privilege. This means you should get service in the states, it just costs a lot of money.
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Re:Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal Saturday in the U.S. by gtr32x on Thursday January 24, 2013 @05:21PM (#5112666)
I am able to roam in the States, and it's connected to At&t right now. Like you said though, the roaming charges are ridiculous, it basically renders the cellphone unusable in accordance to my normal browsing habits.
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Re:Unlocking Cellphones Becomes Illegal Saturday in the U.S. by alanctgardner2 on Saturday January 26, 2013 @06:25PM (#5122244)
If it has the right radios, there are about a million sites online that will sell you an unlock code for $20-40 depending on model. They seem a bit sketchy, but I've never been ripped off on 4 different sites.
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