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T-Mobile Phone Unlocking Lawsuit May Proceed
Billosaur writes "Wired is reporting that the California Supreme Court has refused to review two lower court decisions involving a class-action lawsuit against T-Mobile over their policies regarding early termination and phone unlocking. The Court rejected the reviews without comment, opening the door to the lawsuit, which aims to block T-Mobile from collecting a $200 early termination fee from users. Also on the table: an order for T-Mobile to disclose the types of phone-locking technology that may be in use on customer's phones. The ramifications if the lawsuit is successful would be to allow phone users in California to unlock their phones, and might lead to further lawsuits nationwide."
It's high time the American mobile phone market is made more open and interoperable.
In GSM-dominated countries, swapping phone service has got nothing to do with your mobile phone. You just remove your SIM-card and put in another one. Conversely, when you buy a new phone, you just put your old SIM card in it and you're done.
The rationale for a termination fee is usually that handsets are subsidized. But a better solution is for the FCC to open up the industry so that there is a separate market for mobile handsets. This will give customers more options to buy handsets that they know will work with any carrier, and competition in the mobile handset market will bring prices down.
Carriers can still offer subsidies on handsets with contract termination restrictions - but users will then opt for it willingly - ignoring the option of other available handsets.
2+2=5 for very large values of 2.
This is kind of stupid. Even if all the major US carriers were prevented from locking phones to their network, it would only open the market between T-Mobile and AT&T, and separately between Sprint and Verizon Wireless. Both use totally different networks (GSM vs CDMA2000), so nothing would be open.
Further, as 3G rolls out, T-Mobile and AT&T's versions of UTMS totally incompatible, meaning that their next generation of phone will be naturally locked to a single provider. They didn't do that on purpose, there just isn't available bandwidth in the US to share the same band.
The real solution--rather than enriching attorneys to raise frivolous lawsuits that won't accomplish anything--is to open up the TV spectrum and insist that it actually be open, as Google has been pushing for. That would rapidly obsolesce the existing mobile networks however, leaving them open for replacement as well. Verizon/Sprint/AT&T have spent billions building out old fashioned 2.5/3G mobile service, and aren't excited about the prospect of having it all thrown in the trash can.
How AT&T Picked Up the iPhone: A Brief History of Mobiles