Verizon Asks FCC To Let It Lock New Smartphones For 60 Days (theverge.com)

Verizon is asking the FCC to let it keep new smartphones locked to its network for 60 days, as part of an initiative to prevent identify theft and fraud. "After the 60-day period, the phones would unlock automatically, the telecom says in a note published to its website and authored by Ronan Dunne, Verizon's executive vice president," reports The Verge. "Verizon says it should have the authority to do this under the so-called 'C-block rules' put in place following the FCC's 2008 wireless spectrum auction." From the report: "We believe this temporary lock on new phones will protect our customers by limiting the incentive for identity theft. At the same time, a temporary lock will have virtually no impact on our legitimate customers' ability to use their devices," Dunne writes. "Almost none of our customers switch to another carrier within the first 60 days. Even with this limited fraud safety check, Verizon will still have the most consumer-friendly unlocking policy in the industry. All of our main competitors lock their customers' new devices for a period of time and require that they are fully paid off before unlocking."

Verizon is just putting itself in line with the rest of the industry here. AT&T already requires your phone be activated for 60 days for you to unlock it, and the company even requires you to wait two weeks to unlock your old phone if you're upgrading to a new one. T-Mobile requires you wait 40 days, and also limits users to two unlocks per year per line. Sprint has a 50-day limit, and only unlocks devices from the onset if the phones are prepaid.

Comments

Pointless

[Anne Thwacks]

I do not see the point of locking phones - leaving aside the fact that the guy in the kiosk will unlock them for £5, I have several phones, and even if I took the SIM out of the phone, I would still be under contact and have to pay, regardless of whether I put another company's SIM in or not. Why should I not put their SIM in my tablet and my tablet's SIM in the new phone?

The main effect of locking is to drive me to buy phones cash down instead of on contract. With the likely side effect that I probably buy cheaper phones.

There is no benefit to the carrier from locking (unless I am stupid enough to pay £13 for unlocking instead of £5). There is, however, a considerable loss of "good will" - something that accountants normally value highly!

I think I know why

[bob8766]

If a person buys an unlocked phone on day 1, they are a lot more likely to find a new carrier that they want to use and switch right away.

If you make them wait 60 days then people are more likely to forget about it or just not bother with finding and switching to a new network at that point..

Re:Cricket is AT&T - locked for 6 months

[ZorinLynx]

The pre-paid carriers have really weird policies when it comes to SIM cards.

For example, MetroPCS locks the SIM card to the IMEI of the device, so if your phone dies you can't just take your SIM out and put it in another phone; you have to call them to give them the new IMEI and I think they charge a fee too.

It's frustrating; the entire point of SIM cards was to make it easy to keep the subscriber identity (hence the name SIM) from the device, making it easy to upgrade and swap devices. Of course the carriers in their infinite greed added artificial restrictions.

Re:Why is this a thing? The user agreed to this

[ZorinLynx]

Because Verizon made an agreement with the FCC that if they got to use a specific band, devices would never be locked to Verizon.

It's as simple as that; Verizon made a deal with the FCC so they have to make a new deal with them to change it.

I think the FCC should tell Verizon where they can shove their carrier lock, but we all know it's run by big-business-friendly interests now so good luck with that.

Re: Cricket is AT&T - locked for 6 months

[longbot]

Ever since Sprint switched to SIM cards, they managed to fuck that up too. "Oh, this SIM won't work in that device, we need to give you a new one... But wait, we don't have one that will work in that... Oh, yes we do." And then, even switching from a Pixel to a Pixel 2 took a visit to a Sprint store and them doing some voodoo for half an hour. Switching devices is a huge pain in the ass these days.

In other words...

[xlsior]

...You won't be able to travel to Europe with your new phone and plonk in a local SIM to get 30 days of unlimited data for $30 or less, but instead you'll have to sign up for Verizon's international calling plan and get to pay them $10/day for limited data instead.

Good thing they are so invested in looking out for their customer's best interests, eh?

why?

[fred6666]

It doesn't protect from identity thief at all.
Just ban cell phone locking like Canada has done. It has no reason to exist.

Re:why?

[swillden]

It doesn't protect from identity thief at all.

Identity theft is a rather weird thing to complain about.

My guess is that what this is really about is preventing supply chain phone theft. What happens is that phones are stolen while in transit to customers, or out of stores (often by employees), etc., and then shipped to other parts of the world and activated there. There's actually an international clearinghouse for stolen IMEIs, so that theoretically other networks can refuse to allow stolen devices onto their networks. But the destination networks, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia, have little reason to cooperate. Allowing phones to be locked to Verizon's network for 60 days would help with this, because it would ensure that phones stolen before they get activated on a customer account can't be used anywhere (as long as the implementation of the network lock is secure enough).

If my guess is correct, then I kind of understand what they're trying to do... but I think they should just figure out how to secure their supply chain. The inability to network lock was part of the deal when they bought their spectrum so they should deal with it (if you recall; Google was considering becoming a carrier and negotiated a deal with the FCC to buy it, and included a provision in that deal that the spectrum had to be kept open in a couple of ways -- no limitation on tethering and no network locking. Verizon eventually outbid Google and got the 4G spectrum, but the openness requirements attached by Google stayed.)

Re:Criminals aren't that afraid

[LostMyAccount]

I'm not sure I like any of those ideas, but it did make me wonder...

Most theft laws increase the penalty/severity depending on the value of what was stolen.

I wonder if there should be a more sophisticated formula that depended on the value of what was stolen relative to the income of the individual it was stolen from, and the difference in income between the thief and their victim.

A poor persons stealing $100 from Bill Gates would get the equivalent of a parking ticket, but the same amount stolen from a $15/hr worker would be a serious felony.

An inverse theft (when a rich person steals from a poor person), would be extremely severe.

Re:Cricket is AT&T - locked for 6 months

[crypticedge]

Carriers started doing that ages ago when sim theft was rampant. Sim theft cut down as it became harder to steal sims due to where and how they're installed now, but some like MetroPCS still hold on to some of the sim theft related policies. It's time for them to move forward too