Verizon Asks For An End To Its Phone Unlocking Requirements (lightreading.com) 79
Verizon is officially asking for a waiver of the FCC's phone unlocking requirements. From a report: "Given the substantial and growing harms to consumers, competition and Verizon from this obligation -- and the lack of offsetting benefits -- the commission should waive this rule," the operator wrote.
Verizon faces phone unlocking requirements stemming from its acquisition of 700MHz spectrum in 2008, and also from conditions the FCC placed on the operator's acquisition of prepaid provider TracFone in 2021. The requirements mean that when a customer buys a phone from Verizon it's locked to Verizon's network for 60 days, so that they can only use it with a Verizon SIM card. After 60 days, Verizon automatically unlocks the phone, allowing that customer to use their phone on another carrier's network.
Verizon faces phone unlocking requirements stemming from its acquisition of 700MHz spectrum in 2008, and also from conditions the FCC placed on the operator's acquisition of prepaid provider TracFone in 2021. The requirements mean that when a customer buys a phone from Verizon it's locked to Verizon's network for 60 days, so that they can only use it with a Verizon SIM card. After 60 days, Verizon automatically unlocks the phone, allowing that customer to use their phone on another carrier's network.
Harm... (Score:5, Insightful)
No (Score:1, Interesting)
The only reason they want to sell locked closed phones is because they want to spy on you I intentionally buy my phone from Apple directly simply because it has less spyware and bullshit added to it by default that way, its a FEATURE because Verizon cant be trusted to sell me a phone without spyware,
Re: No (Score:2)
Re: No (Score:2)
What stops the Chinese from selling your information to Americans?
Re: No (Score:5, Funny)
What stops the Chinese from selling your information to Americans?
Tariffs!
Re: (Score:2)
It's just a more pleasant phone to use.
[citation needed]
Re: (Score:2)
and to lock in high roaming fees for the customer (Score:4, Interesting)
and to lock in high roaming fees for the customer
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly this.
My wife and I travel internationally, so a carrier-locked phone is a non-starter. I don't want to pay $20/day for international roaming when I can pay $20 total for a data-only eSIM that covers the entire trip.
Fuck Verizon. This just tells me they don't want me as a customer, which is perfectly fine with me because I don't want them as a carrier.
What competition? (Score:5, Informative)
There are only three non-MVNO cell phone companies in the U.S., so I would argue that there is far less competition in the industry now than there was in 2008, now that T-Mobile has eaten both Sprint and U.S. Cellular.
The answer should be a swift "Hell, no" from the F.C.C. unless they are thoroughly corrupt.
Re:What competition? (Score:5, Informative)
Cough [wired.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Meanwhile in 2024 our former FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wanted to make that 60 day unlock rule for every carrier all the time.
So by all accounts Verizon should get this granted, we sure did vote for it.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/f... [fcc.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry did the "I will do corrupt stuff" candidate and party not gain the Presidency, Senate and House in November? They all told us what their plans were.
Re: (Score:1)
No one campaigned for this, no one voted for this, and "every bad thing is because you voted for bad man" is just lazy. Did everyone who voted for Kamala also vote specifically for starving Gaza?
Re: (Score:2)
If you cared about Gaza and abstained from voting or voted for Trump I would say yes you did vote for the current conditions that was no secret at all. You take the candidate as they are just a matter of how you prioritize your ideals.
Also Trump absolutely campaigned on this, he was President once already, he said he was gonna deregulate, Project 2025 the Republican platform for 20 years. Any claims of ignorance are your own.
Re: (Score:2)
"If you cared about Gaza and abstained from voting or voted for Trump I would say yes you did vote for the current conditions"
That's not what I asked. Did someone who voted for Kamala vote specifically for starving Palestinians? In the vast majority of cases the answer is "No". Also "the current conditions", come fucking on, the Biden administration and Harris' both did everything they could to enable the destruction, so I can see why you would try to turn thar question around.
And the correct answer is almo
Re: (Score:2)
we sure did vote for it.
Whose "we"? Trump won by only 1.5% of the popular vote over Harris.
And it was still (just) under 50% of the popular vote at 49.8% for Trump and 48.3% for Harris.
Though, to be fair to your point, only 63.7% of eligible voters actually voted in 2024 (down from 66.6% in 2020), so the 36.3% who didn't vote, don't get to complain and get what they get - what others voted for.
- 2024 United States presidential election [wikipedia.org]
- Analysis of voter turnout in the 2024 general election [ballotpedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
so the 36.3% who didn't vote, don't get to complain and get what they get - what others voted for.
I never understood this, why not? What if there where no options that you liked well enough to vote for? The people who voted for trump should have less right to complain shouldn't they? If there was an option to say, I don't like any of you and if that becomes the majority then you have remove those candidates and try again. Even if it doesn't do anything but takes politicians down a peg showing them that most people don't want then to rule the country them it might be a good thing.
While I have always vote
Re: (Score:2)
If there was an option to say, I don't like any of you and if that becomes the majority then you have remove those candidates and try again.
In some systems they do just that if nobody cracks 50% + 1 vote. Better voting systems like ranked-choice, approval voting and STAR voting deal with this with runoffs and other methods.
Some countries have voting be mandatory and I kinda like that (and by mandatory it's like your taxes, you have a ballot to sign and mail in but you don't actually have to vote for anything)
Re: (Score:2)
What if there where no options that you liked well enough to vote for?
That's not an excuse. People always have the option to write in someone else. It (probably) won't count for much, but their vote will be counted. Also, one can pick the lessor of bad choices, to try and prevent the worse one. People don't vote for a variety of reasons, most of them aren't good reasons.
The people who voted for trump should have less right to complain shouldn't they?
Dunno. Maybe anyone who actually believed, or still believes, Trump isn't who he clearly is could feel betrayed, but those with eyes and ears should know they're being lied to or, at least, mislead, and
Re: (Score:2)
> What if there where no options that you liked well
> enough to vote for?
Then you do what people who don't want to watch the nation and world burn just because they don't get everything they want all the time. You do what many people, including myself, did in the last THREE general (not primaries) elections. You behave like a grown-up and vote strategically. When the choice is between "meh" and "wannabe dictator who will definitely do horrific things to the nation and the world," sorry not sorry,
Re: (Score:2)
We as in "America" and that includes all of us, not voting is a choice the same as who you fill the circle in for and can be held in just as much contempt, probably even more.
Anyone paying attention knew what Republicans and the admin would act on issues like this, hell they made a handy document for us laying it all out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: What competition? (Score:3)
Re: What competition? (Score:2)
I'd argue that Dish Wireless is the fourth but I don't know if they've built a single tower yet.
Naa (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh verizon, if only you weren't so greedy.
Had you asked for the rule to be changed from 60 days to "as long as the phone isn't paid off", few would have cared.
Removing the rule? Not even interested in entertaining the idea.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not even interested in entertaining the idea.
Maybe you aren't, but with today's government, there's no better time than now. We should have no doubt they will be granted their wish
I call for an end of them financing phones. (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, you want to see prices get more competitive? End the ability for people to go into debt (yes, a contract with a phone company where if you cancel they want 1500$ is 1500$ of debt, and they have you pay it off a little every month, and if you end early they want full payment or will send it to collections).
iPhone 16 too expensive? Can't easily get it financed? Sales go down. Prices go down. It's predatory to have the telecom companies also offer the phone at inflated prices with financing.
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us out here have more than one brain-cell to rub together and refuse to spend the large sums of cash that the latest-greatest phone costs.. Ever since I bought my first smartphone some years ago, I have ALWAYS bought one a few years old, used, from either eBay or other source, and go with a PAYG contract-less carrier. Right now, my phone is a $150 Pixel 4a 5G on the Tello MVNO, where I pay $25/mo for unlimited talk/text and 35Gb of 5G data, and if I run out of that, I get a reduced speed connection
Re: (Score:2)
Right now, my phone is a $150 Pixel 4a 5G on the Tello MVNO, where I pay $25/mo for unlimited talk/text and 35Gb of 5G data, and if I run out of that, I get a reduced speed connection till the next top-up.
Pixel 5a on Ting Mobile [tingmobile.com] Flex plan - $10/month for unlimited talk/text + $5/GB of shared 5G data (that can be used for hotspot). I have never used more than 100 MB of data per month, so my bill is $17.34 (with taxes). My service is actually over T-Mobile, but Ting also supports using Verizon. Ting used to be owned by Tucows and is now owned by Dish.
Re: (Score:2)
Carriers routinely subsidizing phones ended years ago. Once in a blue moon you'll still see a "free iPhone if you sign up now" promotion. But I don't know *how* long it's been since I walked out of the Apple Store only down $199 for my new iPhone. And, of course, the cellular plans did not drop in price when we started paying full price for our phones. Since they've all decided to be dicks about it, I just pay in-full upfront and get a completely unlocked phone every time now.
aah no (Score:1)
Market failure (Score:3)
Typical market failure. SIM locking serves no purpose. Countries where the practice was outlawed (like Canada) are doing just fine without SIM locks.
And no, SIM locking is not required for financing phones.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. There is no sim locking here where I live, but the carriers still offer 0% intrest rates on phone financing.
Why? Because a customore is very unlikely to switch away from the company they buy both their phone and phone service from, if the company does at least fairly good service and customer aquisition is expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Typical market failure. SIM locking serves no purpose.
Verizon owns several various prepaid brands. The main reason they want this unlocking exception is because they tend to sell prepaid phones at a subsidized price, which they might not recoup if the phone is only used for 60 days. Some prepaid companies have mitigated this issue by requiring ID verification on phone purchases, others have required that the first several months of service be purchased upfront in order to get the subsidized price on a phone.
As much as I hate carrier locks, I'd be fine with t
Re: (Score:2)
Tell me why do we need subsidized prepaid phones again? If Verizon can't offer them without SIM lock, then too bad, they just don't have to offer them.
Also what they consider subsidized price often is just a fire sale from old stock.
Re: (Score:2)
SIM locking serves no purpose.
Huh? Did you forget to have some coffee this morning?
SIM locking serves a number of vital purposes. It permits the company to generate MUCH higher profits through forcing behaviors on the consumer. It also keeps business and revenue more predictable. Honestly, it is every monopolist's dream.
Or did you mean that SIM locking serves no purpose for the consumer? If so, be more specific or your lazy language will lead your thoughts astray.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just from a consumer perspective.
What I meant is that SIM locking is a net loss to mankind. Every ressource spent on developing that feature, enforcing it, etc. would have been better spent on something else.
It doesn't matter who you are (Score:3, Insightful)
Losing the ability to unlock a phone you paid for is just one of many ways you're screwed.
The Big Beautiful Bill passed the house, and it's on track to get through the Senate via budget reconciliation.
"What do I care, I'm not on Medicaid!" you say?
CBO says it'll cost 800k jobs, cut the GDP by $1 trillion a year, add $5-$8 trillion to the national debt and spook the bond markets possible triggering a depression.
Oh, and if you're rural your hospital won't survive those Medicaid cuts. Many suburban hospitals won't survive. Have fun driving 2 hours into town during a heart attack!
No man is an island. You can't shit all over your back yard and not get dysentery.
Re: (Score:2)
The Big Beautiful Bill passed the house, and it's on track to get through the Senate via budget reconciliation.
Not sure about that last part. The bill currently includes a provision to limit state's abilities to regulate AI for 10 years. Reconciliation requires that everything in a bill must be related to mandatory spending, revenue, and the federal debt limit; the AI part clearly doesn't. If the Senate removes it, which they should to pass review, the bill will have to go back to the House or, if the Senate has an alternate Bill, the two will have to be merged.
Reconciliation (United States Congress) [wikipedia.org]
Budget reconciliation bills can deal with mandatory spending, revenue, and the federal debt limit, and the Senate can pass one bill per year affecting each subject. Congress can thus pass a maximum of three reconciliation bills per year, though in practice it has often passed a single reconciliation bill affecting both spending and revenue. Policy changes that are extraneous to the budget are limited by the "Byrd Rule", which also prohibits reconciliation bills from increasing the federal deficit after a ten-year period or making changes to Social Security. Reconciliation does not apply to discretionary spending, which is instead managed through the annual appropriations process.
What Trum [builtin.com]
Re: (Score:2)
If you're questioning that last part did you know there are several major disasters in America right now? There's been several hurricanes and a few floods. FEMA is doing fuck all because Trump ordered them to stop doing anything in order to
Re: (Score:2)
If you're questioning that last part did you know there are several major disasters in America right now? There's been several hurricanes and a few floods. FEMA is doing fuck all because Trump ordered them to stop doing anything in order to pocket the money for himself.
Ordinarily the news media would be covering any of these kind of disasters left and right because if it bleeds it reads but they have been explicitly ordered to lay off of trump.
I get your point, though I've seen coverage of the disasters *and* Trump/FEMA on MSNBC and other sources. In related news, Trump's acting FEMA director was fired and frog-walked out of FEMA HQ last week after contradicting the Administration in testimony to Congress. Trump’s acting FEMA chief fired a day after breaking from the administration [cnn.com]
The acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been fired one day after he broke with fellow members of the administration when he told lawmakers he does not support dismantling the agency...
The move comes one day after Hamilton defended FEMA during testimony in front of the House Appropriations Committee.
Re: (Score:2)
The evidence of voter suppression last election is overwhelming and the centrist Democrats on the left wing are still bickering over policy bullshit. Pure deck chairs on the Titanic crap.
Re: (Score:2)
The evidence of voter suppression last election is overwhelming ...
But, but ... the Trump administration just arrested four -- four! -- people who allegedly voted illegally! Two were green card holders from Ukraine, who said they thought they were allowed to vote in the 2024 election; one was an Iraqi man, in the U.S. for more than a decade, who voted in the 2020 election, and is a Trump supporter; and the last is a Jamaican woman accused of illegally voting in the Florida 2024 presidential primary. Apparently DOGE helped by (reportedly) comparing state voter records wi
Re: (Score:2)
You're technically not wrong, but your post has fuck-all to do with cell phone carrier locking. It really is a very back-burner issue that few people care about. Hell, I put a video on YouTube about it [youtube.com] when I first noticed that Verizon broke the "C Block" spectrum rules by implementing carrier locks. It's sitting at a little over 450 views. It's basically that Jurassic Park meme. [tenor.com]
Granted, I'll give you that yes, there's far worse things to worry about in the current political climate than buying a phone
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps the Democrats should have been worried less about their own enrichment and status quo if they wanted to be a viable option to a narcissistic autocrat who doesn't experience basic reality.
Honestly, the entire process is corrupted. Thanks Israel, Russia, and rsilvergun (for not admitting how corrupt his party of choice is).
China and Europe as a whole also get honorable mentions here.
Hell no (Score:2)
Locked phones should be banned. If your phone is locked, you don't own it. You're renting it.
Re: (Score:2)
That's kind of the point, right? The phones are locked because the carrier subsidized the purchase with the understanding that you would need to use it on their network long enough for them to recoup the costs.
There's a SUPER EASY way not to get stuck with a locked phone, buy it from the OEM.
Re: (Score:2)
Locked phones should be banned. If your phone is locked, you don't own it. You're renting it.
That's like saying that if your vehicle has a lien on it, you don't own it, you're renting it. Which is to say, it's not entirely untrue, but it leaves out the part about how you haven't actually paid for it yet. Until you make the last payment, and thereby satisfy the contract terms that mean the seller can no longer reclaim it from you, it's not really yours. But it's not rent, either. It's installment payments.
They reasonably should not be required to unlock the device until you pay for it, because it's
Re: (Score:2)
No. If you didn't own your car in the same way, it would mean you were prevented from filling it with anything but the approved brand of fuel and you could only drive it at approved times to approved destinations.
A lien on your phone would mean you couldn't sell or trade it in until you finished paying for it. But you could put it on any comparable network using any standard SIM card.
I don't think anyone is seriously claiming you shouldn't have to finish paying for your phone. The claim is that you should b
The only reason they lock phones (Score:3)
is because they know they are ripping you off. If they are comfortable that they're offering the best deal .. why lock the customer's phone?
Re: (Score:2)
Except your phone being unlocked doesn't magically absolve you from a contract. That's what I don't understand. This is literally money on the table. Verizon is giving up the option of people paying them while also paying someone else, and visa versa.
SIM locking isn't just anti-consumer, it's anti-economic. It makes zero sense.
To hell with Verizon (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I dumped Tracfone recently after I paid and they failed to provision the data. (Same plan, existing line, same device, no changes.) The service date extended, talk minutes were added, but no data.
Could I have called their customer service to correct it? Probably. But first I tried seeing if I could do something via their app or website. That gave me a stark reminder of how completely shit their website and app are, and have always been. Not quite functional. Then I started thinking about their 6-month lag t
We all know how this will go (Score:3)
We all know how this will go. The administration will poo poo the idea until Verizon's CEO offers to fellate Donald Trump in public, then suddenly the government will find that this is an onerous burden on business.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah the admin will love the idea since the Biden FCC wanted to make the 60 day rule mandatory.
"Biden idea == bad. Do opposite" is our number one policy driver today.
Given the substantial and growing harms to... (Score:2)
Europe's market seems to be thriving (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
People think markets and regulations are these opposing ends of magnets forgetting they work in tandem. EU passed regulations and the phone carriers and markets over there adapted to them and as you and others have mentioned, it works fine, probably even better than the US. As I have traditionally known it service in the EU always tended to be cheaper and it was common practice to carrier jump. This pairing of carrier to hardware always seemed like a very American thing.
The only people unlocking harms (Score:2)
Is Verizon, not consumers
Oh BS (Score:3)
"Given the substantial and growing harms to consumers, competition and Verizon from this obligation -- and the lack of offsetting benefits -- the commission should waive this rule,"
The only harm is to Verizon's bottom line. Everything else is a lie, and in fact the OPPOSITE of the truth. They are gaslighting. F* them.
Re: (Score:2)
The only harm is to Verizon's bottom line.
How though? It's not like my phone being unlocked somehow absolves me from my contract.
A tax on stupidity doesn't usually bother me (Score:2)
No one is forced to buy a phone from a carrier.
I have no idea why anyone would.
Re: (Score:2)
Not. Yet.
Multiple E-Sims? (Score:2)
In come the deregulators, out go the safety nets (Score:2)
Watch out for an increased number of ways businesses (looking at you Private Equity) will sap your bank account via contract provisions such as this. It's not just limited to phones.
More and more products and services are being offered as a subscription only.
The rent-seekers are winning. The elected officials in the US government are hell bent on making it more precarious to live, and this may be a feature not a bug.
Capitalism may be transitioning to a "rent-to-continue-to-live" model. Don't subscribe to
And this is why... (Score:2)