Starting This Week, Wireless Carriers Must Unlock Your Phone

HughPickens.com writes Andrew Moore-Crispin reports that beginning today, as result of an agreement major wireless carriers made with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in late 2013, wireless carriers in the US must unlock your phone as soon as a contract term is fulfilled if asked to do so unless a phone is connected in some way to an account that owes the carrier money. Carriers must also post unlocking policies on their websites (here are links for AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile), provide notice to customers when their devices are eligible for unlocking, respond to unlock requests within two business days, and unlock devices for deployed military personnel. So why unlock your phone? Unlocking a phone allows it to be used on any compatible network, regardless of carrier which could result in significant savings. Or you could go with an MVNO, stay on the same network, and pay much less for the same cellular service.

Comments

Welcome to the 90's, USA

[ledow]

Welcome to the 90's, USA.

I don't think I've ever had a phone on contract that couldn't be unlocked on demand after the initial period.

Re:Welcome to the 90's, USA

[CrimsonAvenger]

I always just paid for my phone up front. Unlocking was never an issue....

Re:Welcome to the 90's, USA

[Shakrai]

Nice American slam and you got FP to boot.

If you're willing to consider facts instead of punchlines:

T-Mobile: Always had a reasonable (90 days) unlock policy, which was and remains fairly well advertised.

Verizon: Never really locked their phones to begin with, except for certain iPhone models, but that's an Apple issue and not a Verizon one. The Verizon phones that were "locked" always used 123456 or 000000 as the code, which was well documented in Verizon's T&Cs. The usefulness of unlocked IS-95/IS-2000 phones was somewhat questionable, though you could activate Verizon phones on Alltel and vice versa back in the day. I never tried it with US Cellular but I've heard anecdotes from people who did and were successful. In the LTE era Verizon has never locked any of their phones; virtually every Verizon branded LTE capable phone has the required GSM and WCDMA bands to operate globally, on any network, and they're SIM unlocked out of the box.

AT&T/Cingular: Had a policy similar to T-Mobile back in the day, though they didn't advertise it and their CSRs weren't well trained on it. Finding someone to process the request was tedious but possible

The big offender amongst the "big four" was Sprint. They've long had a fairly draconian policy but the damages resulting therefrom were insignificant before LTE came on the scene. Sprint's phones were only useful on Sprint's network, most of them lacked the bands to be useful on other CDMA networks, whereas Verizon and Alltel (before they got assimilated) had phones that were fully interoperable with one another. I used an Alltel branded RAZR on Verizon for many years without any issues.

Deployed military

[Anonymous Coward]

Bummer, I deployed and made sure that my Sprint cell phone was unlocked prior to my deployment. I asked Apple and I asked Sprint, both verified that they were unlocked. ... Then Sprint sent an OTA update and locked it. When I called and complianed, they were a stone wall and absolutely refused to unlock my phone. Invoking the SCRA, I terminated my contract on my brand new iphone, took it to the store and sold it for $50 more than I paid for it. (wasn't expecting to actually make a profit on it). And signed up for another carrier that DIDN'T lock my phone. ... Problem solved. And I was even paid for my troubles. Of course, Sprint lost my family's business, so there's that.

Useless

[Ark42]

With the whole 2-year contract things, most people can basically never have their phone unlocked for international use until it's time to upgrade anyway. Locking phones should just be illegal to begin with. If you sign a contract saying you are going to pay for service for 2 years, you have to pay for that service (or pay an ETF) regardless of if your phone is locked or not.

Re:Useless

[Shakrai]

You base American phone won't work on most overseas networks due to frequency lock downs.

That's not really the case these days. Even in yesteryear it was only the case some of the time; every dumb flip phone I owned whilst on T-Mobile was a quad-band global phone. 850/900/1800/1900 GSM.

Today it's SOP for American smartphones to include support for 900/1800 GSM and WCDMA, which makes them operable in most countries. Even the IS-95/IS-2000 (aka: CDMA) carriers have gotten on this bandwagon. My Moto X supports CDMA 850/1900, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100, and LTE Bands 4 and 13. The latter is only useful in the US and Canada, so no LTE roaming if I go overseas, but I've got full access to the local GSM and WCDMA networks.

LTE roaming would be nice though probably moot at this juncture since there aren't too many international LTE roaming agreements just yet. I anticipate having that ability with my next phone though. :)

Re:Useless

[SeaFox]

With the whole 2-year contract things, most people can basically never have their phone unlocked for international use until it's time to upgrade anyway.

You say that like people have to upgrade their phone every two years. They could just, I dunno, be happy with what they have. Get a battery replacement if that's the issue you're having (mine personally last closer to 4-5 years). This whole need-to-upgrade thing is only a consumerism mentality.

Re:What about data-only devices?

[mitcheli]

Bit curious about the Apple SIM cards used in ipad air 2, are those MSL or Domestic SIM locked, and if so, what would be the point if they work with multiple providers?

At what cost?

[zentigger]

There is nothing in there stating that the carriers must unlock the device free of charge. We got burned by the same sad lack of foresight in Canada: The carrier must unlock your device, and they will actually do it right on the phone with you in most cases, but not until you have paid the $75 fee!

Why should you ask them to?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Why shouldn't we require them to unlock it at the preset time, on preset conditions. 2 year contract, paid up, unlock the phone.

Did you guys know that Samsung's EULA actually allows it to push ads at odd times of the night, ring you and make you look at the ads? In fact it has the right to put you call on hold and make you listen to an ad for 15 seconds once in 3 minutes. And finally the government wheels have started moving against locking the phone. By the time they understand Samsung's smart-tv/smart-phone pushed ad model, we all would by dead ...

Great! Now what about bootloader locking?

[LaughingRadish]

This is nice, but there's still a problem with carriers locking the bootloader on smartphones. This means one cannot easily or reliably change the OS to something more suitable. I'd like to install CyanogenMod on my phone, but I learned after I got it that my carrier locks the bootloader.

Read the MVNO plan really carefully.

[damnbunni]

Before switching from a prepaid carrier to an MVNO, make sure you read the MVNO's plan closely.

Some don't allow roaming at all, or only allow a minimal amount (like say, 25 megs of data). Some don't allow tethering/hotspot use, or charge an extra fee for it. Some shut off data when you hit the cap instead of throttling.

You can save money with an MVNO, but make sure you're actually getting the services you need.

How about just don't buy a phone from the carriers

[aussersterne]

in the first place?

There are some FABULOUS devices coming out of China these days, readily available on eBay and Amazon, with high specs, Android KitKat or Lollipop, and sold at half the price or less vs. offerings from the carriers.

Just got a Huawei Honor X1 and am using it with an MVNO in the US. The retail price of the new off-contract phone from China, purchased on eBay, was about what the two-year on-contract retail price of a similarly specced Android device is in the U.S. The MVNO contract, with "unlimited" data (throttling to HSPA+ after the first several GB every month) is less than half the price of a similar contract at a major carrier.

There's no reason to buy on-contract phones any longer.

Re:no offense, but indeed in the 90s

[Shakrai]

the US is about the only country in the world where the recipient pays for incoming calls when not roaming. I leave it as an exercise to the read to think why this is plain ridiculous.

Why is this "ridiculous?" The alternative is caller-pays, which is indeed how it works in the EU; it's one price to call a landline and another higher price to call a cell phone. That's kind of absurd in my eyes, why should someone have to pay extra to call me?

the prices are plain crazy. In Europe you pay max 30-50 Euros per month for unlimited plan, with 1GB or data.

It was actually less than that in Finland but this point I'll largely concede. Of course if I'm nitpicking I'll point out that virtually all American plans including texting and all of my Finnish friends have to pay extra for that. Consequently they all use WhatsApp or FB Messenger, which took some getting used to for me when I was there, but at the end of the day works the same.

in the US, if you exceed your limit

Depends on your plan. I have unlimited.

the US has many many dead areas. I know, it is a big country. But the fact remains.

"Many many" dead areas? Depends on your carrier. I'm on Verizon. There aren't too many dead zones for me; I have to go hiking into the wilderness to find one.

incredibly intrusive branding, crapware, etc

Depends on your phone.

carriers are involved in certifying which phones are supported in their networks

they use non-compatible networks.

You're behind the times, this is a moot point with LTE, they all support SIM cards now.

Their customer service is such crap that I don't know where to start.

That's in the eye of the beholder and subjective. Verizon and T-Mobile have stellar customer service in my eyes. I can't speak to AT&T or Sprint since I've never done business with them.