Starting today, it’s illegal to unlock your cell phone

But for the locking – if someone wants to get a $500 phone for a buck on a three year contract, then man up and honor the contract. If that’s a problem then cough up the $500 bucks and buy it outright and be a “free agent”.

I’m not seeing the problem.

kim roy on January 26, 2013 at 4:41 PM

Unlocking has nothing to do with honoring or not honoring the contract. If I sign a contract that states that I will pay $80/month for the next two years then I will need to pay that (or the early termination fee, to offset the subsidy made on the phone) regardless of whether I unlock my phone. Furthermore, carriers sometimes refuse to unlock the phone despite the contract ending. There are two main legit reasons to unlock a phone and still be on-contract:

1) Overseas travel. Go abroad for two weeks, pay for a local plan abroad so that you can use the physical phone itself abroad instead of renting a phone, or worse, going without a phone at all. Keep paying the contract because you still want your number and everything to work when you return.
2) Multiple carriers for multiple service regions. One carrier works really great at home, but no signal at the office; another carrier works great at the office but no signal at home. By unlocking, you can swap out the SIM card for that of another carrier depending on where you are so that you can still make calls (and receive them if people have both your numbers).

Furthermore: Subsidizing cell phones is a dishonest business practice. It’s not a subsidy, it’s a loan. Your new iPhone doesn’t really cost $200, it costs $650, so when you buy it for $250 you’re taking out a $450 loan from the carrier and paying it back over two years by paying roughly double the monthly cost for the service plan. I get better APR on my credit card let alone a proper bank loan. But to make customers think that they’re getting a good deal, the carriers deceptively make people think, “well I’d be paying the same price per-month contract or no contract, so there’s no harm in signing a contract” which is completely wrong.

If you guys want to stop paying $100/month cell phone bills, support:
1) an end to multi-year cell service contracts. Free market economics require people to be able to change providers when their provider starts to suck, and not allowing people to do that prevents consumers from voting with their wallets.
2) requiring all cell phones to be sold unlocked. Again, allow consumers to vote with their wallets. By showing the real price, perhaps people will think twice before buying a new cell phone every two years that they don’t need, while allowing people to easily resell used phones so that they can more easily afford new ones.

solatic on January 26, 2013 at 5:05 PM