Starting today, wireless carriers have to unlock your phone

Re:Starting today, wireless carriers have to unlock your phone by dazne on Thursday February 12, 2015 @05:28AM (#9038224)

I think these phones should be unlocked the day you sign up for a contract. What's the point in keeping them unlocked? You can't violate your contract. I can think of one downside for them carriers: they won't be able to charge you extra when you travel abroad, but then you have to ask if that's really in the best interest of the customers? Perhaps not.

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Re:Starting today, wireless carriers have to unlock your phone by coldpie on Thursday February 12, 2015 @08:42AM (#9038705)

Prosecuting a violated contract takes money itself. You have to do the cost/benefit of prosecuting users and losing subsidized phones vs. paying to develop locks and maintaining an unlock process.

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Re:Starting today, wireless carriers have to unlock your phone by NoPiece on Thursday February 12, 2015 @06:10AM (#9038323)

You definitely can violate your contract. Just stop paying your bill. Or declare bankruptcy. The carrier will try to collect, but even if they do they'll end up with a fraction of the value.

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Re:Starting today, wireless carriers have to unlock your phone by bad_user on Thursday February 12, 2015 @08:48AM (#9038722)

Most phones can be unlocked. For an iPhone, the difficult part is to jailbreak it and doing it yourself can be a little painful, but that hasn't been a problem for many people. So somebody stops paying their bill, or declares bankruptcy. Do you think there's anything stopping them from unlocking their phones for pennies?

As an anecdote, I once stopped paying my bills to Vodafone and gave up on my contract obligations. At that time Vodafone demanded a 250 EUR interruption fee, which in the meantime became illegal in my country. Well, I told them to dare and sue me, because I have proof of unjust treatment and service disruption on their part and I did have that evidence. Basically they were assholes, they knew it and they gave up on any claims. I also unlocked my iPhone 3GS by myself and moved my business somewhere else.

Just like DRM, there is absolutely no valid reason for selling locked phones, other than lock-in, i.e. to prevent you from using other carriers while in roaming and thus suffer roaming charges. But even that is just annoying, because you can get unlocked feature phones for $30 without a contract, with a battery that lasts for a whole week and just use that.

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Re:Starting today, wireless carriers have to unlock your phone by dazne on Thursday February 12, 2015 @08:33AM (#9038676)

Correction: I meant, what's the point in keeping them locked?

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