Didnt even know carrier locking is still a thing. I think thats long illegal here in the EU
People can usually unlock the carrier on their own. Many phones (or at least every phone I've ever gotten from T-Mobile) even come pre-installed with a carrier unlocking app. It's just not automatic, and certain conditions need to be met.
People may also sometimes be able to buy phones already unlocked directly from the manufacturer if they want to. (Whether or not they're able to do this depends on the manufacturer.)
About damn time.
How about no lock in from the get go?
So everyone knows… the new Apple Card lets you do 0% financing on the iPhone. (You also get 3% cash back for buying from the Apple Store.)
So you can buy an unlocked iPhone and pay for it in installments.
Now there is no need to buy from the carriers, have a locked phone, or pay full price up front.
Source: Me, paying ~$68/month for the unlocked iPhone 15 Pro. Also, I do a carrier’s prepaid plan because I’ve been bested by contracts before.
This would be of limited use for many people. Carriers lock people in by selling lots of phones that are missing frequency bands and cannot be used on their competitor's networks. For instance, many of TMO's phones cannot be used on AT&T and Verizon's networks. My Oneplus 9Pro is a great phone, but if I wanted to switch to Spectrum (on Verizon's network) or AT&T I would be forced to buy a new phone.
Some phones like the Iphone and Pixels are compatible with every U.S. network, but plenty of others are not.
I don't really have a problem with this -- I think that it's rarely in a consumer's interest to choose a locked phone. Buying a locked phone basically means that you're getting a loan to pay for hardware that you pay back with a higher service price. But I'd point out that:
You can get unlocked phones and service now. I do. There are some privacy benefits to doing so -- my cell provider doesn't know who I am (though they could maybe infer it from usage patterns of their network and statistical analysis). It's not a lack of unlocked service that's at issue. To do this, Congress is basically arguing that the American consumer is just making a bad decision to purchase a plan-combined-with-a-locked-phone and forcing them not to do so.
Consumers will pay more for cell phones up front. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- it maybe makes the carrier market more competitive to not have a large portion of consumers locked to one provider. But there are also some benefits to having the carrier selecting cell phones that they offer in that the provider is probably in a better position to evaluate what phone manufacturers have on offer in terms of things like failure rates than do consumers.
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