Obama Asks FCC To Make Carriers Unlock All Mobile Devices

New submitter globaljustin writes "According to a Washington Post report: 'Several months after calling for legislation to unlock cellphones, the White House filed a petition (PDF) with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday asking that all wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices so that users can easily switch between carriers. ... the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said that allowing unlocked devices would increase competition and consumer choice, while also putting the burden of changing networks on companies rather than consumers.' This move should be met with universal acclaim from cell phone users, right?"

Comments

Topology

[eedwardsjr]

There is still the whole GSM vs CDMA issue.

Re: Topology

[h4rr4r]

Since CDMA as normally implemented does not have SIM cards it is extremely consumer unfriendly. In fact in violation of their LTE band C requirements VZW is not even activating outside devices on their network. You can activate an approved device and move the SIM over, but they will not activate a new SIM in an unapproved device.

Re: Topology

[justthisdude]

There are many smaller cell service providers besides the big 4. They buy time on the major networks in bulk and resell it at discounted prices. A list of the alternatives for A&TT includes Airvoice, Black Wireless, Fuzion Mobile, H20 Wireless, Straight Talk ( list from the Mr. Money Moustache blog). With my phone unlocked I can get the same service from the same towers for $40 from Airvoice that A&TT charges me $87/month. I am at the end of my ATT contract and I am seriously considering buying an unlocked iPhone 5s and switching to Airvoice. The extra $449 will be paid off in 10 months of cheaper payments (just in time for me to waste more money on an unlocked iPhone 6!)

Re: Topology

[davros74]

T-Mobile did not refarm its spectrum to support the new iPhone. They worked with Apple to get a special version of the A1428 iPhone 5 to support AWS band 4 (1700/2100)MHz, which allows the phone to work on their data network. ATT is not using 1700/2100MHz for their data network.

Now, to relieve congestion on their 4G networks, T-Mobile is moving their EDGE networks over to HSPA+ on 1900MHz to provide additional 3G bandwidth on a predominantly only 2G frequency. This is only happening in major cities, such as Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, etc. If you're like me (in eastern Iowa), this "network evolution" doesn't mean crap for me. Now, as a pure side-effect, providing HSPA+ on 1900MHz allows 3G to also work on earlier iPhone models, such as the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. That was NOT the primary intent.

So the situation still is - if you want fully featured data services, you must know the frequencies and waveforms your carrier uses and make sure they are compatible. For me, with an iPhone 4S (unsupported on iWireless, a T-Mobile subsidiary), I get EDGE speeds here, but when I viist larger cities operated by T-Mobile, I get 3G. For the iPhone 5, well, there are no less than FOUR versions today (and it was more complicated before the T-Mobile iPhone rollout in early 2013), but as of now, there's the CDMA/Verizon version, there's the international GSM version (which does not work on AWS 1700/2100MHz), the ATT GSM version (which does not work on 1700/2100MHz) and the "Unlocked/T-Mobile" GSM version, which does work with AWS 1700/2100MHz. Clear as mud, right?

Even if the phones were unlocked and everyone could switch carriers, until you get the cell phone manufacturers to start making "world" phones again for data, it's still pretty much locked down (such as the ATT vs Tmobile vs Verizon/Sprint iPhone5 issue described above). At least for VOICE, yes, any GSM phone works just about anywhere in the world, but we let the companies make a mess out of "standards" for 3G/4G/LTE data.

Re: Topology

[Solandri]

You guys still have CDMA?

Not only does the U.S. still have CDMA, most of the rest of the world does too. CDMA won the standards war. The only part of GSM which uses its original TDMA is the voice comms. Most GSM carriers have adopted CDMA or WCDMA for 3G and 3.5G data service (including HSDPA/+).

TDMA sucks because it allocates a timeslice to each phone regardless of whether or not that phone actually transmits during the timeslice. The way CDMA works, every phone can transmit simultaneously and the bandwidth per phone decreases proportionally to the increasing noise floor. i.e. it scales automatically with number of phones transmitting, instead of scaling with the number of phones connected to the tower like TDMA. If it weren't for CDMA, 3G data speeds on GSM would've been limited to about 150 kbps.

That's also the reason GSM phones can do voice and data simultaneously. They have a TDMA radio for voice, and a separate CDMA radio for data. CDMA phones typically have only one CDMA radio, so they can only do either voice or data, not both simultaneously.

CDMA is finally being supplanted by OFDMA (what most implementations of LTE use) because processors have finally become powerful enough to decode the OFDMA signals without draining your battery in 30 minutes. Conceptually, OFDMA is very similar to CDMA, except it operates in the frequency domain instead of code domain. In CDMA each phone is assigned an orthogonal set of codes (e.g. Three phones could be assigned codes AB, BC, and CD. If the phones 1 and 2 transmit simultaneously, the signal the tower sees is ABC, and it knows phones 1 and 2 transmitted while 3 did not. In this simple example, instead of losing 1/3rd of your bandwidth because phone 3 didn't transmit like would happen in TDMA, you only lose 1/4 the bandwidth. The more complex the codes, the less bandwidth you lose). In OFDMA each phone is assigned an orthogonal set of frequencies.

Re:Obama and the FCC dont get cell phone tech

[gl4ss]

yeah that's why we don't have pentaband phones going from 900 to 2100 on umts and gsm.. oh wait we do.

cdma networks in usa were on purpose built so that you're tied to the network as the phone provider. they should never have allowed to do so because it's pretty obvious what the result from that kind of arrangement is..

Re:It's a contract, guys...

[Pi1grim]

This might come as a surprise, but in Europe we have unlocked subsidized phones. You are effectively locked in by the contract, no need to add overhead and inconvenience by locking down the phone. The company still gets the money in full, providing a long-term hidden loan bundled with service, exactly as planned. And users get to use local SIM cards when going abroad, without paying the extortionist roaming fees.
Locking down hardware is nothing more than an attempt at cash-grab by imposing extra inconveniences for the user (you still pay for the phone over the course of two years, except you still don't get to own it, great deal).

Google Could Probably Just Take Over There Too

[Greyfox]

1) Install WIFI nodes covering the entire USA
2) Sell wireless SIP phones that connect to a massive VOIP server.
3) Profit.

Even if you only had service within city limits, you'd already be much more reliable than any cellular carrier I've ever tried. My android phone can run a SIP client and I've been kicking around the idea of just dropping the cellular contract and rolling my own solution with an asterisk server on a cloud service and a local wifi provider.

Re:Not "ours"

[Charliemopps]

The phone company is obligated to provide them in clean blocks because most PBX equipment used in hospitals expect full clean blocks. Modern soft switches usually don't have a problem but there are lots of hospitals expansion projects and such in which they are not upgrading their equipment. Again, this is regulated by the government. All of this is regulatory nonsense... much of it proposed and written by lobbyists from AT&T as they have the most to gain from regulatory red tape and high fees. Notice that lately there are fewer alternative carriers in your area? That's because AT&T lobbied congress to let them raise inter-carrier rates to the point that its no longer profitable to lease lines in their territory.

Re:Promised fulfilled

[Real1tyCzech]

So in reality you haven't even bothered to look into the service you are deriding?

Good to know. We love uninformed statements of fact around here... :-/

Let me give you some actual information to use in the future so you actually have a clue what you are talking about:

As stated below - the terms work out to the same or less than you'd pay direct from the manufacturer.

I paid $99 down for my One. Once my payments are complete, I will have paid $579 for the device...exactly what I would have paid for it outright.

The monthly bill is $50 (unlimited talk/text/data). The $20 payment is one you can drop at any time simply by paying it off. There is no lock-in on your contract as to the amount of time you must hold it. Once you've paid the cost of the device, you are done. You are not bound by any contract to any length of service.

Please make yourself a note to try and avoid making comments on things you know absolutely nothing about in the future. K? Thanks.

Re:Universal Acclaim?

[Patch86]

I did the maths for my last phone purchase (an HTC One X for my wife), as I do whenever I make a purchase like that. I don't have the figures available to me right now, but the amount extra you pay over the course of a contract was more than if I'd just purchased it on my credit card and paid it back over the same time frame. And credit cards aren't exactly the cheapest loans available...

If people could see how much they were paying on their loan-by-any-other-name, they might be inclined to get the money from a different source even if they can't afford to pay it outright. That's not to say that the carrier-contract model couldn't still be available for those that still wanted to take it up.

Plus, it might inspire carriers to lower their interest rates a little if they were open to more transparent competition.