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> I just don't get the sentiment of "unlock my free-with-contract phone two months into my contract, you bastards!" It's not your phone.

Sure it is. You received a discount on the phone on the condition that you sign a separate contract which obligates you to pay the carrier a certain amount of money for the next 2 years, but that's a separate matter.

If you've bought a phone, you can do what you want with it. Separately, you may have to pay a penalty for breaking a contract (and that penalty would include the cost of the discount that you initially received), but that doesn't mean that the phone isn't yours.

Exactly. If I'm allowed to smash the phone with a hammer than I should be allowed to twiddle the electronic bits inside. Anyway, it sounds like the carriers finally agree.

No, they don't. These "principles" still require your contract be up or an ETF be paid on a "post-paid" (aka subsidized) phone.

So when you get a car loan and buy a car, the bank can dictate where and how you can drive and service it? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a sentiment.

The carrier lends you the money, you agree to pay it back, that's as far as their involvement goes. This is standard practice in Europe. You get a phone for cheap, you agree to pay monthly installments, you can throw the phone off a cliff or install BeOS on it, for all the carrier cares.

The difference here is that with a car loan, even if you drive off the car lot and right into the ocean and leave it there you still legally owe the full price of the car to the bank and they can come after you if need be. Cellphone companies make money off of you from the 2 years of data/voice plan service. If I go sign up with AT&T for a $200 iPhone5 then unlock it and go to T-Mobile the next day, AT&T got screwed. Maybe smartphones should just be sold at full price and you either pay it in full or get a bank loan, like cars & houses. But we know if we did that, a whole bunch of people suddenly wouldn't be able to afford the phones and the whole market around cellphones would have to change dramatically.

How exactly? You're still in a 2 year contract. Whether you're using T-mobile's SIM or not is completely irrelevant. You signed a 2 year contract with AT&T and you're paying them every last time until that period expires. Unlocking the phone changes nothing.

Unless, you actually interrupt the contract with AT&T, but in that case it's not much different than it is today, and you just pay the ETF and you're on your merry way.

Because the contract isn't the same as a bank loan. They're suppose to be making money on the voice/data usage for 2 years, but you're not using the AT&T sim card anymore. I thought the person I was replying to wasn't happy with the ETF fee since he was debating with the mikestew who said he just paid ETF to make the carrier switch. If we're all in agreement that the current business model needs the ETF fee before unlocking, then I guess I have nothing to say. But anyone who wants their phone unlocked without paying ETF is missing the part where carriers would get screwed on high-end phones.

Get a $200 iphone5 from AT&T, next day unlock it without paying ETF and get a cheap prepaid T-Mobile sim and never use the AT&T sim again; thus not paying AT&T's voice/data fees(and we all know they get you on overages). That'd be a problem for the current business model. To make up for the lack of overage-charges they'd have to make the phones more expensive or raise the monthly minimum charge.

NOTE: I understand the awkward issue of travel though. I made the mistake of using my AT&T sim in Nigeria once. Maybe smartphones should accept difference SIMs after it determines its in a country other than where it was bought. But of course, then I go to amazon.co.uk and order an iPhone5 to be sent to America. ;)

> Get a $200 iphone5 from AT&T, next day unlock it without paying ETF and get a cheap prepaid T-Mobile sim and never use the AT&T sim again; thus not paying AT&T's voice/data fees(and we all know they get you on overages).

Huh? You would still have to pay your monthly contract to AT&T even if you no longer used the AT&T sim.

If you're not using the AT&T sim, then you can never incur overage. I don't have the data to back it up, but I'm pretty sure overages are a significant part of their profits. If I'm wrong about that then my argument falls apart and I accept defeat.

If you're not using the AT&T SIM, you're also not putting any load on their network, and they can oversell it more without spending any money on network upgrades.

That just sounds like they are miss-selling their product and they should face some kind of regulation to prevent it happening.

Caveat Emptor and everything, but routinely exploiting ignorant customers should not be a business plan.

No, I disagree that the current business model needs an ETF fee before unlocking. It needs an ETF fee before terminating the contract, but that's not the same thing.

There's no issue with unlocking your phone and using T-Mobile while continuing to pay your AT&T bill (except to your wallet). Nor is that scenario outlandish - just replace T-Mobile with a foreign carrier while traveling.

> They're suppose to be making money on the voice/data usage for 2 years

And they will! You can throw your AT&T sim away and never touch it again. But you will still pay them the $70 a month or whatever you were paying them before, unless you actually break the contract with them and pay the ETF. AT&T doesn't lose in either situation.

> So when you get a car loan and buy a car, the bank can dictate where and how you can drive and service it?

Last I heard, they usually demand that you purchase certain insurance coverages... And insurers usually have their own rules about what you an and can't do with your car (if you want your insurance to be affordable anyway).

I would agree with you if all the carriers offered transparent plans that charge you just the monthly plan amount without the phone subsidy if you bring your own phone. Only T-Mobile does at the moment. As it is, I can bring my own unlocked phone, but I'll still get charged the subsidy.

AT&T just announced their own lineup of no-subsidy plans as well: http://www.zdnet.com/at-and-t-announces-new-mobile-share-val...

To me, this just underlines how the GSM carriers are playing in a very different field than the CDMA carriers (especially after the T-Mobile refarm added 1900 MHz HSPA+ to their network and since new AT&T and T-Mobile phones both support LTE band 4).

I think that's a fair argument, and one of the reasons I switched to T-Mobile. With AT&T, et. al., if you don't get a new phone in the same month that your contract ends you're getting screwed on your next bill.

I think you need to differentiate between unlocking the phone and breaking the service contract. Just because you want the former doesn't necessarily mean you want the latter.

For example, you might want to make sure your phone is unlocked so when you take a week trip overseas you can pop in another sim card to use in another country, but you might keep your existing contract with AT&T active because you'll keep using it when you come home.

I don't really see any logical reason why having a service contract with a cell company should prevent you from doing this.

> I just don't get the sentiment of "unlock my free-with-contract phone two months into my contract, you bastards!"

This is a reasonable thing to want if you travel overseas and want to pop in a cheap local SIM card for the duration of your trip, instead of paying the absurd roaming charges.

I think you're confusing 2 issues here:

1) unlocking the phone

2) killing the contract with AT&T

Until now to "unlock your phone", you had to kill your contract with AT&T, and then move over to T-Mobile. But now you'll be able to unlock the phone for free - while maintaining the contract with AT&T - and still be able to use T-mobile. So you'll be paying both contracts (if for some reason you want to use both - like say you have family on AT&T's network, etc).

This is very common in Europe. People use 2 networks on the same phone all the time, by switching the SIMs. And I think in Asia, too, because in both these regions dual-SIM phones are on the rise.

Even if your mortgage isn't paid off, you can still live in your house and modify it as you see fit. Granted there are some conditions (have to maintain insurance, etc.), but phones represent a smaller possible loss, and thus should probably be less restrictive with what you do with the collateral (also, phones aren't secured loans, so they can come after you for other assets, unlike houses).

> If you think $200 buys you an iPhone, you're sadly deluded. "$200 with 2 year contract" means you haven't bought anything, you're still paying the mortgage with every phone bill. If you want to buy something and "do whatever you want with it", Apple, Google, and a host of others will sell you an unlocked phone. And it will cost a bit more than $200 (though the Nexus 5at $349 isn't too far off).

Assume that's true, for the moment.

That doesn't mean they get to use unrelated laws in weird ways to stop unlocking. Either they lobby to get a law introduced, or they improve their locking technology, or they stop selling phones like they are.

But abusing copy-right protection and anti-piracy laws is sub-optimal.

If you think $200 buys you an iPhone, you're sadly deluded.

At a typical retail markup, perhaps ~$400 is about right.

For those interested> Teardown Shows iPhone 5S Costs at Least $199 to Build, $173 for the 5C

http://allthingsd.com/20130924/teardown-analysis-shows-iphon...

Paying the contract and using the phone are two different things. As long as you continue paying for your contract, why should the carrier get any say on how you use your subsidized phone?

There are plenty of great uses to unlock your phone even if you still want to keep the primary contract, like travelling abroad or maintaining multiple SIMs on a single phone.

Is this how you get to the top of a HN comment thread? by posting something totally ignorant?

Why is the text in your post not completely faded away yet? There must me more of your type around here than I thought.

Where was it said that if you unlock your subsidized phone that you no longer had to pay for it? The fact that it is subsidized means that you are under contract for it. Break the contract and what happens? You pay for the rest of the phone plus more in early termination fees. It's YOUR PHONE once you sign the contract and you are going to pay for it one way or another. Stop paying and you are going to have collection agencies stalking you, won't be able to register your car or get any type of credit, and your wages garnished.

Don't ever have pin stripes painted on that sports car you are paying off. Don't ever replace the flooring on the home you are mortgaging. Try logic sometime.