Phone unlocking ban could could hit you in the wallet

PCWorld ^ | Jan 25, 2013 | Mark Sullivan

[J05h]

As of Saturday, your options for owning an unlocked phone become far more limited. You can ask your carrier to unlock it—and good luck with that—or you can pay a premium to manufacturers like Apple or Google for a new unlocked phone. You just can’t unlock your phone yourself—at least, not legally.

That decision was made not by voters, the courts, or even Congress. It was made by one man, 83-year-old Congressional Librarian James Hadley Billington, who is responsible for interpreting the meaning of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Billington decided last October that unlocking your phone yourself is a violation of the Act, which was originally written to prevent digital piracy.

[CSM]

I should have included you in my #19 thank you. I appreciate my FRiendly lessons! ;-)

[TurboZamboni]

Plain old phones had a similar issue if you wanted to move and keep your number or switch local carriers. Then they made “local number portability” the law .

I’m sure the new Consumer Protection Czar will ride to the rescue and fix everything.

lucky you- new Colt!

[BuckeyeTexan]

Well yes it did. Carry on!

[BuckeyeTexan]

You did and you’re welcome.

[Moltke]

or you can pay a premium to manufacturers like Apple or Google for a new unlocked phone.

No, you can just pay the regular price for that phone and be done with it. Talk about getting things bass-ackwards!

If you think you can get that $500 phone for $0.99 with no strings attached...well, think again.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Congressional Librarian James Hadley Billington, who is responsible for interpreting the meaning of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Sounds like the guy in charge of ritual at Gormenghast castle in Mervyn Peake's classic fantasy...IIRC an ambitious young man put himself in virtual charge of the castle by taking that job over and using it to his own ends. Makes you wonder.....Not that this affects me - I neither have nor want a smart phone - but it is yet another freedom gone to socialism.

[fireman15]

All of the carriers I know of have early termination fees that make it difficult for people to profit from selling subsidized phones, or advantageous to leave before their commitment is up and go to another carrier. I actually think the article misses the mark by a bit.

the rule change doesn't really affect my wife and I much because we don't switch carriers or get a new phone very often. Our phones are all several years old and we have been with the same carrier for longer than that. But I do have a story that can illustrate a little closer what I think that the real issue is. Ten years ago we were using the same carrier that we had our land lines with for our cellular service. We were satisfied with the price and service up until they sold of their cell towers to Sprint.

They said that this would improve their coverage, but the Sprint towers we were now using gave first priority to Sprint customers. Even after several months most of our calls were dropped within a couple of minutes. It was explained to me that whenever all of the spots in the cell tower nearest our phones were filled up our calls would be dropped to make way for Sprint customers just coming on line.

We were quite happy with the expensive Motorola handsets that we had paid hundreds of dollars a piece for. We are careful with the things we own so they were in perfect condition and we had also purchased hands free adapters and external antenna connectors for our cars, along with extra batteries and cradle charges. We were out of contract... so after six months of frustration we decided to switch to Sprint. I assumed that we would be able to use our premium handsets that were already using the Sprint network.

No dice! Sprint forced us to buy new handsets. They did not offer the same type we had so we could use all of the accessories we had for them. We ended up getting phones that were twice the size of the ones we already had, but at least the problem with dropped calls went away. I almost decided to go with a different carrier, but we were already paying significantly more per month than we had been and I knew the towers worked where we lived... which can be a problem when you are in an outlying area.

I still have those expensive phones in a drawer along with a few others. Of course they are expensive paper weights if no carrier will let you use them. It bothers me that I cannot use products that I purchased for the use they were intended. This is actually about control. The contract carriers don't want you to be able to use even one of their older phones with one of the no-contract carriers. I am getting very tired of it and am about ready to give Sprint the boot.

[Moltke]

Sorry to hear you got stuck with an uncooperative provider.

Not to point out the obvious, but did you try to just use your new Sprint SIM cards with your previous phones?

I’m not aware that the cell net would be able to discriminate between the phone devices if a valid SIM card is recognized.

[fireman15]

Sim cards are used only on GSM networks. Sprint is CDMA. From what I have read this ruling affects Sprint customers who want to use their older Sprint phones on Cricket, Boost Mobile or other pay as you go providers using CDMA networks. To me it appears to be a typical government one size fits all solution to what is basically a non-problem.

[fireman15]

If Sprint did use SIM cards the phones most likely still would not have worked unless they were “unlocked”; that is the whole point of “unlocking” the phone. Even if your phone is using the same towers the phone is still tied to the provider and will not work with any other provider. In my case I felt betrayed by Qwest whose service took a radical turn for the worse after I had purchased expensive phones and accessories.