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CRTC Bans Locked Phones and Carrier Unlocking Fees (mobilesyrup.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Canada's telecom regulator has announced that as of December 1st, 2017, all individual and small business wireless consumers will have the right to have their mobile devices unlocked free of charge upon request, while all newly purchased devices must be provided unlocked from that day forward. The decision came following the February 2017 review of the Wireless Code, where unlocking fees took center stage, with some parties (like Freedom Mobile) advocating for the abolishing of those fees altogether, some arguing they should remain as an important theft deterrent and the CRTC suggesting the fee should be far under the current $50 CAD standard. "The Wireless Code has helped make the wireless market more dynamic to the benefit of Canadians. While they appreciate the Code, they told us loudly and clearly that it could be more effective," said Jean-Pierre Blais, chairman of the CRTC, in a press release.
Well, this is a start. Phone locking has been outrageously abused by carriers, and I'm glad they're getting another kick in the balls from the CRTC. Next should be a review of wireless pricing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I sure hope they will be forced to offer better prices at the end of contracts because you may often he able to negotiate a 10$/m reduction while the value of the phone amounts to 2- to 25$ per month during the contract. Prices are the same everywhere and you have to search and work a lot if you want to get the best price. CAD$40 for 1Gb per month is pure scam. It's almost no data at all!
Also Canadian here. Unlocked Moto X Play.
When I go to the US, I use my SIM from Roam Mobility. They utilize the T-Mobile network which had never given me any trouble. Got 4G LTE everywhere i went on my last trip. Going again this August.
I just ordered a BLU R1-HD (2GB RAM, 16GB Storage) for my younger brother. Reviews looked good and only $150 CAD. Runs Android 6.0
I can't wait to see how the carriers manage to interpret this rule in the most customer-hostile way possible. Maybe they'll create a special "speaking to phone unlocking agent" fee.
Log in or piss off.
The Fuck are you talking about?!
Same here, I use a Pre-paid T-mobile Sim in the US.
Japan still uses CDMA.
I believe unlocked CDMA networks should be mandated. The US CDMA carriers support phone unlocking because they are still locking down what devices can access their network.
The US GSM carriers use different radio frequencies than the rest of the world. making International roaming difficult. Even the 2 US GSM carriers (AT&T and T-Mobile) are not totally compatible with each other.
Thank you, CRTC. This ruling was long overdue!
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
If that's the plan, it's not working very well. You can buy plenty of phones unlocked CDMA. You can use them on verizon and several smaller ones, which is really not much different from GSM you can use on AT&T and several smaller ones.
Considering how pathetically few americans venture beyond our borders the fact that GSM rules internationally doesn't matter so much.
I guess it's feasible that it keeps the big two from actually competing with each other, except with the high turnover rate of phones, I'm not sure people are trapped in one very long.
CDMA is shortly going to be gone at least within the US since both major CDMA carriers have opted to take the LTE route.
As for the GSM carriers (read UMTS) and the US using different frequencies than the rest of the world. This is nothing short of bollocks. The frequencies allocated differ all over the world. There is no "this is the frequency used in the US and this is the frequency used in the rest of the world" standard. If you get a quad band phone however, you should be set in about 80% of the world, the US included. But frequencies are allocated basically where ever there's room in the spectrum. There is no standard for frequency allocation.
Honestly, This is the best reason why you cant let businesses go along without regulation.
If companies do asshole things like locking a phone, then they deserve industry wide regulation and fines.
So many people wail about "regulation is killing business" No assholes that run companies are killing business.
Say no to assholes in management positions
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Funny that Freedom Mobile says that they are against unlock fees. When I got a new phone about a month back, they told me there would be a fee to unlock the phone. Likely they don't want other carriers to charge to unlock their phones to make it easier for customers to switch to their system. However, they are doing the exact same thing.
The whole reason there are locks in the first place is that the cell phone is usually paid for as part of the monthly bill. Putting a lock on it gives some assurance that the carrier will receive whatever money they are owed as part of the contract before the customer moves on to a new carrier.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Nearly all implementations of the data service in GSM 3G (UMTS, HSDPA) is wideband CDMA.
CDMA won the GSM vs CDMA war. GSM was designed (by committee) to use TDMA - each phone takes turns communicating with the tower. That was OK for voice, but absolutely destroyed data bandwidth because each phone got an equal slice of the bandwidth even if it didn't need it. CDMA allows every phone to transmit simultaneously, and the tower distinguishes them because each phone uses orthogonal codes. Kinda like two people writing on the same sheet of paper, one vertically, one horizontally. CDMA interprets other devices transmissions as an increase in the noise floor (decrease in signal to noise ratio), so each phone's bandwidth scales automatically. If 10 phones are transmitting simultaneously, each phone gets 1/t0h the bandwidth. If only one phone is transmitting, the noise floor is lower and it gets all the bandwidth.
This is why CDMA carriers rolled out 3G data a year before GSM. The U.S. allowed both standards to compete, and CDMA absolutely destroyed GSM in data service. GSM threw in the towel and licensed CDMA from Qualcomm, and needed the extra year to come up with the specs and hardware. This is also why 3G GSM phones could talk and use data at the same time. They had a TDMA radio for voice, and a wCDMA radio for data. CDMA phones had only one radio, and it could only be used for voice or data, not both simultaneously.
CDMA for voice is used mainly in only the U.S. But if the U.S. had gone along with GSM, our data speeds today would probably be around 300 kbps - 1 Mbps. And LTE probably wouldn't exist. Most implementations of LTE use OFDMA - orthogonal frequencies as opposed to orthogonal codes in CDMA. CDMA served as the proof of theory that this crazy orthogonal signaling stuff really did work when scaled up to the size of a nationwide network. Without that proof, people wouldn't have been willing to put in the time and money into developing LTE. (OFDMA requires more processing to extricate the orthogonal signals than CDMA. Up until about 2010, the processors needed for OFDMA used too much power to be of practical use in a device designed to operate for at least 12 hours on battery. My old Galaxy S supported Sprint's WiMAX which was also OFDMA, and it would only last about 4 hours if I was using WiMAX.)
The time-limited nature of TDMA is also why GSM coverage is worse in rural areas. Because the timeslices are synchronized and a constant length, each TDMA tower's range is limited by the speed of light multiplied by the duration of the timeslice (IIRC this is about 35 km). CDMA has no such restrictions, so in a wide-open rural area with little noise and few obstructions, a single CDMA tower can cover a lot more area than a GSM TDMA tower. TDMA was just a bad idea overall, and it was stupid for GSM to standardize on it.
What? My phone is capable of CDMA and GSM. I don't *FEEL* locked in...
The different frequencies are a non-issue. The chips just do more channels. Like 802.11, the chips do 1-14, but turn off 12-14 in the US, when set to US region. My non-US phone works fine in Europe and US. This was an issue in 1998, when the cost of chips was higher, and GSM was not popular in the US, so the foreign phones weren't physically capable of the US channels.
Today, almost every phone does do everywhere. Apple is an exception, where they claim a cost savings to cut $0.10, but in reality lock regions in hardware. So you have to pay extra for the "international" version to get the phone that isn't region locked.
My phone, bought in Singapore, as a Singapore-local phone, works fine in the US on AT&T and T-Mobile, as well as in Europe, Asia, Australia, though I didn't try it in Africa when I was passing through. That's how phones actually work these days. There may be some issues with newer 4G channels, but for 3G speeds, 100% coverage is available in most unlocked phones.
Roaming is easy.
Learn to love Alaska
Can a grammar Nazi get sex? Let's see... Fuck you.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
You fail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The Fuck are you talking about?!
I think he's talking about hot grits, Natalie Portman, and goatse.
Do you have ESP?
Power abhors competition. It doesn't matter what form this power takes. When you have strong government, government gets blamed. Where you lack strong government, factional violence gets blamed.
There's a principle in computer science that you can solve any problem by adding another layer of indirection, except for too many layers of indirection.
There's a principle in politics that you have nothing to fear but fear itself.
There ought to be an economic principle that you can solve any problem by enabling more competition, except for the competition to destroy competition.
Power abhors competition.
Unfortunately, economists waste too much of their brain power on ideology and fail to spot the obvious.
Now nothing makes government power intrinsically benign, but it is easier to point to. (What does Wall Street contribute, exactly, that benefits the economy enough to justify raking in 1/6 off all corporate profit in America?)
In a country with strong public institutions, being easier to point to can make government more benign than diffuse, libertarian oligarchy.
Hence libertarianism abhors strong public institutions.
The bottom line here is that competition itself is subject to systems theoretic scarcity constraints. These are especially hard to point to, but they nevertheless exist.
The next Hayek will be the guy who figures out how to write this down in compelling equations.
Hopefully, they will limit themselves to just shouting across the US-Canada border.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Worth noting is that this decision has come down on the last working day of CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais. What a great parting gift to the carriers after all their years of extorting every possible dollar from Canadians.
Fare thee well, JP Blais, and thanks for the solid!
I'm glad to live close to the U.S. border so that I can use Roam Mobility as needed to get around the hideous roaming fees charged by the Canadian carriers.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
66 million is a lot higher than I would have expected, ~20%. It seems like they might be double counting, though - i.e I went to Canada, and Asia. Since all of their sub totals add up to less than the 66 million (I am guessing the missing numbers are for Oceana), and I can't possibly be the only person to visit two regions, I can only conclude they mean 66 million trips out of the country rather than 66 million distinct Americans.
but the monthly discount is laughably low on it so it's obvious that the difference between that plan and a full featured plan isn't the actual cost of the phone
There are various ways the carrier can offer lower prices this way than you would get if you bought the phone directly...
The carrier doesn't need to profit from the sale of the phone, as they are already profiting from the service.
No retailer overheads on the handset etc.
The carrier has a lot more buying power than you do, phone manufacturers will offer steep discounts to a carrier looking to buy 500k units.
The carrier doesn't have to pay sales tax etc on the phones they buy.
You may find that the actual cost of the phone is a lot lower than you expect.
But i do find carrier locks offensive... If i bought the phone it should be mine to do with as i please. There are already penalties in place for breaching the contract, but why should someone who obeys the contract terms be punished? If i'm still paying the monthly fee it should be no business of theirs what i do with the handset.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I love this country, I honestly feel protected by my government. Its a good feeling, and its not the weed. :)
[($)]
In what way is a locked phone a theft deterrent? Other than reducing it's potential resale value, which a thief won't find out until it is stolen?
If trade is really free, does this mean I can order a Canadian phone from anywhere in North America, including the USA? I'm guessing not... because some animals are more free than others.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Or is mobilesyrup.com somehow supposed to be an official spokesperson for the CRTC?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
All of your points go out the window when you look at the price of the phone at the carrier's own store, and find that it's way more than the discount for bringing your own times the number of months on the contract.
The most I've seen is $10/month off for a BYOD plan, and contacts are limited to 24 months by law. So that's $240. There aren't many phones they'll let you buy outright for $240 in their own store, which means that the BYOD plans are a to off as you are obviously still subsidizing someone's device.
Uncouple them I say. If I pay for an S8+ at over $1000 off contact, you only give me $10 off per month? But if I take your contract I pay $200 and am locked in for $24 months. These 2 options are from the same carrier, so whatever discounts and hardware deals they get are identical, and with locking you know they'll both be used on your network. Meanwhile in every other industry paying for a product over 24 months instead of all at once it's MORE expensive, not less.
The math doesn't work.
It's grammar nazi time! Pay attention to the correct forms:
The consumerS gets what they want or The consumer gets what HE wants
It's grammEr nazi time! Pay attention to the correct form: The consumerS get what they want.
It's grammar, not grammer.
-- spelling nazi :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Since we're talking about Canada, the carriers most certainly pay GST (Goods and Services Tax), plus provincial or combined taxes, to the supplier. They get a credit for the tax they've paid and only pay the difference to the tax men when they sell the phone to a consumer. (It's a bit more complicated, but they most certainly do not get their phones tax-free).
Now if they import them, they have to pay the tax to the governments instead of to the supplier. When they sell on the phone, they still charge the customer taxes on the full price, but only remit the difference between what they already paid the government and the taxes they collected.
The old way, with the manufacturer's sales tax and tax numbers that allowed you to buy tax-free if you weren't the final consumer, was killed when the GST was introduced.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You missed an important point - you can already buy decent phones - unlocked - for less than $240, and you'll save more than $10 a month compared to buying a phone with a plan.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Not from those same carrier's who think that $10/month is fair.