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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.
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?!
Thank you, CRTC. This ruling was long overdue!
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
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.
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.
This is one of those places where government regulation made sense.
Although all the carriers locked their phones, and it was obvious that customers didn't want it, no single carrier dared unlock without the rest of the industry following suit. Although one company could possibly use it as a selling point to try to attract customers, in reality it would be a competitive disadvantage.
You can imagine if only one company offered unlocked phones, their customers would be free to leave for the competition, but the competitors customers would not be free to do the reverse.
The free market can in fact sort out many things, but this just isn't one of them. (that, and the whole definition of a "free" market in such a heavily regulated space)
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
I'd also like to see the boot loader unlocked. This just means you're not tied to a specific carrier. Having the boot loader unlocked would mean you could actually own the hardware - instead of purchasing the hardware and licensing the software.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The Fuck are you talking about?!
I think he's talking about hot grits, Natalie Portman, and goatse.
Do you have ESP?