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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?"
There is still the whole GSM vs CDMA issue.
Let's look at some potential headlines:
Obama Bans Cell Phone Subsidies
Apple stock plummets as iPhone is no longer affordable
Is this the beginning of a national cell plan?
Antichrist makes power play in mobile sector
Had to throw in one from FauxNews. Anyway, there's lots people could complain about here. Some of it might even be reasonable.
Another person asleep during the GWB years?
Or any other president in fact. All presidents are selective enforcers of the law.
Now we can CHANGE carriers.
Maybe...
Presumably you're still locked into some contract that went along with getting that shiny new phone.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20130311/01344922277/government-might-want-to-legalize-phone-unlocking-unfortunately-it-signed-away-that-right.shtml
:/
The interesting part is treaties can (and do) override what the US federal government can do.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
You can't have that many antennas in the phone without it being too big. There are half a dozen frequency bands ranging from 700Mhz all the way up to 2100MHz, and one antenna will not do it all.
Sure, it's easy enough to have a software defined radio like they do, but the amplifiers, LNAs, matching networks, and antennas are all cut for one or maybe two bands.
Although my phone is unlocked, if it weren't, and it got unlocked, my choice of a wireless carrier will increase by exactly one carrier.
A 100% increase, that's huge!
Yes it's called a "Loan" and it's what happens when you buy a $600 toy with $50 and someone tells you they need $20 a month until they have $600 from you.
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You say that as if the US didn't feel free to violate treaties and international law whenever it wants.
There fixed that for you
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
having worked for a phone company, in the very department that handles number portability, I can tell you that moving your number around is a huge pain in the ass for the phone company. And no, it's not because their systems are in the dark ages. It's because the PSC gives out number blocks in groups of 10,000. (think 555-555-0000 through 9999) and they ONLY give you so many. Now imagine your blocks of numbers filled with people that don't even have services with you... so now you have maybe 5 numbers in use in a block of numbers... and a major hospital gets built and needs 10,000 phone numbers. You go to the PSC and ask for more numbers, and they say "No, you already have 100k numbers in that area and you are only using 45% of them. Use the other numbers!" But the hospital needs them consecutive and many of those blocks are contaminated with non-customers. There are entire departments dedicated to dealing with these sorts of issues,
Welcome to 2011. The iPhone 4S supported CDMA and GSM with one SKU.
LTE made the situation more complicated though with the 5C/5S
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/166356-iphone-5s-and-5c-the-best-support-for-3g-and-4g-lte-networks-worldwide
I think the more important issue is preventing a carrier from forcing a data plan on you even if your phone *is* branded to their network.
Yes it's called a "Loan" and it's what happens when you buy a $600 toy with $50 and someone tells you they need $20 a month until they have $600 from you.
At least for some carriers, the price under contract and the off-contract price are the same. So none of the money you're paying them per month is for the phone. It's then not a loan, and the "cost" of the phone is the opportunity cost of being under that contract as opposed to being able to purchase different service. Depending on where you live, this opportunity cost could be zero. Imagine, say, Verizon is the only carrier that actually works in your neighborhood.
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..
When you trace the origins of CDMA back to PCS, it was developed to overcome the bandwidth-sharing shortcomings of AMPS. The tech lock-in was more of a happy side-effect (for Sprint -- at the time still making a lot of its money selling long-distance carried on lines running on the Southern Pacific Railroad's rights-of-way.)
I am not a crackpot.
No, the monthly bill is significantly more than the $20. The $20 part is so you can pay $900 for the $600 phone over the two years.
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).
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.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
I always wonder about those people like you who say, "Obama is ok because Bush did the same." Do you not realize that people voted for Obama to be better than Bush? We didn't just want another Bush. We had hope.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And he did bring change, he brought an astonishing amount of change seeing as the GOP asshats in congress have spent the last nearly 5 years shooting down even their own proposals to destroy his Presidency.
Apparently getting 90% of what they want isn't sufficient they have to get that remaining 10% as well.
But, despite of that DADT is gone, DOMA is gone, we have Obamacare, the President actually waited for the UN in Libya. Not to mention we did get some banking reforms, even if they weren't anywhere near enough and the economy has been slowly on the mend. Slowed mainly by the refusal of the GOP to do anything to help the progress out.