Hacker News Reader

Comment by amluto | Hacker News Reader

I’m always a bit surprised the FCC doesn’t attack this from the other end: require that phones sold in the US not support carrier locking.

View on HN

Because the lock is, effectively, collateral in exchange for getting a new phone on a monthly plan. Just because the carriers abuse that by not unlocking after the phone is paid off doesn't mean locks are inherently evil. It prevents one from paying, say, $300 of the phone off, then jumping ship to a different carrier.

You can’t jump ship without paying for the phone.

They lock phones because carriers are willing to pay off someone’s phone so people jump ship. It’s a pure anticompetitive practice.

True, Verizon (and its associated MVNO) phones unlock automatically after 60 days but the bill credits and associated subsidy persists for the duration of the contract term.

But Verizon was caught continuing to charge the subsidy payback amount every month AFTER the customer had fully paid off the subsidy.

My phone costs $300.

Frankly, it's absurd to pay laptop prices for a phone.

> Verizon, for example, says in its FAQs that all smartphones the comms giant or any of its retail partners sells are locked for at least 60 days from purchase, even when you've paid full retail price or paid off your device payment agreement early. It claims the policy helps to "prevent theft and protect customers from fraud."

Further, as noted by multiple commenters (and this can be confirmed by a google search turning up numerous accounts): T-Mobile automatically locks an unlocked device when you insert an AT&T sim into it.

> T-Mobile automatically locks an unlocked device when you insert an AT&T sim into it.

Which is bizarre. T-Mobile doesn’t own the device. They don’t even have a SIM in it.

This should read as “T-Mobile has entered into an agreement, which should be against public policy and illegal, such that the device vendor locks the device under certain circumstances.”

Actually that's backward. Monthly plans are for UNlocked phones.

The idiotic thing about locked phones in the USA is that they're given to customers who are ON CONTRACT. Therefore, if the customer takes his phone to another network, he still has to pay the original one! Why on earth would the phone company want to prevent people from paying for service they're not even using?

The sheer stupidity of this behavior is almost worse than the offensiveness of the entire phone-locking concept.

Absolute nonsense.

As others have noted, that's why there is a contract in place - if you don't pay the monthly bills, they can seek to recover the costs from you.

Also, what you're saying would do nothing to stop someone selling the phone to another customer on that carrier.

> always a bit surprised the FCC doesn’t attack this from the other end: require that phones sold in the US not support carrier locking

There are fewer carriers than phone makers. And the anticompetitive benefit accrues to carriers.

You could at least require that all phones be automatically unlocked when the phone is paid off or when the contract period expires.

The customer shouldn't have to take any sort of action to remove the lock.

This arrangement is idiotic, though. Under contract, the user still has to pay the original company if he takes his phone to another network. Why PREVENT that?

or you could require that once a sale, contract, payment etc is reached, the phone remains as originally offered, no removal of features, or activation of anti features allowed unless willfully and knowingly initiated by the owner [user,holder,purchaser] of the device.

pushing unstoppable modifications, retroactively altering the device without consent, stuffing features with antifeatures, turning the device into something it wasnt at the time of sale, these actions should be banned for phones, as well as any other product.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com