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Comment by lcw | Hacker News Reader

I worked for a start-up that was struggling for money. The CEO had a bunch of relationships with small carriers in the US. One day he asked me to create a program that rooted a specific type of flagship Android phone and to update the carrier information to his choosing. At first, since we were a testing startup that had some government contracts, I thought this was for testing purposes since we had cell test equipment. I realized not too long after it was to basically enable small US carriers to sell flagship phones that were meant for different regions... Let's just say that was the final nail in the coffin for me at that specific startup.

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>Let's just say that was the final nail in the coffin for me at that specific startup.

I don't understand what you had an issue with here? Legally it's completely in the clear (see first sale doctrine) and morally I'm not sure how it's any different than, say, the startups making IBM compatibles back in the 80's.

Not the person you’re replying to, but I would have a problem working somewhere that had a business model of signing contracts they had no intent of honoring. Ethics aside, I’d have serious doubts about how they would handle any stock grants or other obligations to me.

> One day he asked me to create a program that rooted a specific type of flagship Android phone and to update the carrier information to his choosing.

Are you referring to the baked in default APN's for different MCC/MNC combinations? Yeah those were/are quite annoying to have around if they were out of date. (I think there might be auto-update of these now, but that obviously requires a network connection)

Or are you referring to actual radio config partitions on the flash? (Where one was able in the past on many models, flip bits in order to activate different cell bands)

The former being janky and security risk, the latter being somewhat illegal.

This is from about 10 years ago. So the carrier apis were a little different then, but the answer is both were necessary to update depending on the test or in this case carrier.

> Let's just say that was the final nail in the coffin for me at that specific startup.

Why? Do you consider contempt of business model to be immoral? Or are you saying the phones were stolen and not just gray-market?

The manufacturers have contractual agreements with certain carriers in specific regions and get reduced rates because of the purchase power of those markets. It's not ethical in my opinion especially if you want to have a lasting relationship with said manufactures, which we did, to purchase large amounts of those phones and then sell them to US carriers by changing carrier configuration. At the time we were receiving pre released flagship phones to test with. I see people arguing that it's a supply and demand problem and there is nothing wrong with it, but the reality is more like there is demand there, but at the time carries say in South America could make a quick Million USD off just dumping the phones to the US which leaves the people of that region unable to purchase flagship phones at reduced rates. I'm not sure if the economics are the same now, but that was my understanding at the time and I felt like it wasn't and ethical path forward.

Have you been to South America? Flagship phones don’t cost less here.

Paraguay is about 20% more, Argentina 100 to 200%, and Brazil 30 to 40% more.

Anything that is high end costs much more here due to a combination of tarrifs, reduced volume and the people who are wealthy not caring.

Read up on Ciduad Del Este, it’s basically the electronics hub for the southern cone where electronics are smuggled into Brazil and Argentina. Beef and eggs from Argentina get smuggled into Brazil and PY.

Anything that you were doing pales in comparison to what everyone here is doing.

Thanks for sharing I'm definitely going to read into it a bit, and I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about South American economics nor have I spent a lot of time there.I definitely haven't bought anything expensive there. As I said in a previous comments this was sometime ago, but I would say that if a bunch of carriers were selling their allotment of phones to US markets it could lead to the scenarios that you are depicting. If it's easier to offload to the US market expensive phones than reasonably there would have to be a big incentive to keep them in market which would inflate costs to be higher than US markets. I can't speak to the tariff issues though that could hurt my argument. It may be a lesser evil at the end of the day who is it for me to say. I just didn't feel right about it.

Yeah the cell phone world is a little dodgy at times.

It’s unethical to stand by and allow a manufacturer this kind of control over their customers either by legal or technological means.

It should be illegal to impose such terms on anyone who purchases anything from you.

Freeing those phones was a virtuous act, even if done for self interested reasons.

I think you are looking at this from the consumer side, and I completely agree with you. Consumers are probably none the wiser on the original intended region of their phone and should not be penalized.

I'm talking from a corporation/carrier side that let this happen to consumers. If you sign to terms of a contract that gives you special access to phones to sell in your region and then you just go and break that contract that doesn't seem right to me. To be clear I don't think downstream consumers did something wrong.

> it was to basically enable small US carriers to sell flagship phones that were meant for different regions...

Sounds like you did god's work.

Genuine question as I don’t understand what this is. Is this essentially just unlocking the phone or something else?

Would this be legal from under first-sale doctrine?

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