- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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I install alternative firmware, so no sale for you.
This is talking about carrier locked phones, not locked bootloaders.
How does that work? Based on imei perhaps? Does spoofing that not do the trick?
They shouldn’t be locked at all. If the phone is included with the contract, it probably requires you to pay it off if you cancel early anyways.
“T-Mobile claims that with a 60-day unlocking rule, “consumers risk losing access to the benefits of free or heavily subsidized handsets because the proposal would force providers to reduce the line-up of their most compelling handset offers.”
I’m I stupid or are they threatening to arbitrarily raise prices for no reason other than spite?
Also wtf is a “handset”?
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“Handset” is obfuscating legalese to refer to a cell phone in a way intending to distance the meaning of the word from the thing that the old and technologically illiterate people who rule on this use every day.
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I’m no fan of their strategy, but cell phone providers have claimed for a long time that filling your phone with unremovable bloatware causes the overall price to decrease. They’re argument is most likely that they will have to charge more once the propagators of that bloatware realize that they can no longer force it on people and wedge that as a reason to pay less to carriers.
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The reality is that cell phones are priced based on what people will buy anyway and carriers pocket is much of the money as they can that third parties pay them for their bloatware. Ultimately because of that this ruling hurts their bottom line, but the above reasoning gives plausible deniability in the face of the law as it is interpreted by old technologically illiterate lawmakers
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Is there a technical term for when a company or corporation makes a statement that is a blatant bad faith argument like that?
If none exists, I’d call it “Corporate massturbation”. Because they’re trying to jerk everyone off.
It’s always the same argument. “This objectively bad thing for consumers is actually good for consumers because it allows us to offer a lower price!”
No, dipshits, you are choosing to make your product shittier than necessary and charging customers to undo your shittery. That’s not some external thing, it’s something that you chose.
Propaganda
Gaslighting?
Not even close.
If they are good, why then the Europe ended that practice nearly 2 decades ago?
They must hate freedom!!
and behold all of the terrible consequences!
Missing in this thread, courts are not known for their technological literacy. So companies just lie to them. Like, all the time. This isn’t meant to withstand consumer scrutiny.
isnt lying to court felony?
Yeah but you have to get caught lying. And the courts aren’t very literate with tech and economic stuff. You’d basically need to create a memo that says, “lol we lied!”
someone should try to inform relevant courts about technical things, no idea how but those corporations shouldnt be allowed to get away with crime
You’d be interested in groups like the EFF and Amicus briefs.
For poor people, maybe
This.
Are you suggesting that there are some lies involved in this? If so, you shouid be specific about which lies you’re referring to. Without the specifics this just seems like FUD.
“Narcissistic domestic abuser claims the exit doors that are locked from both sides are just for the protection of their spouse and its in their best interest to be secure”
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength
Damnit! I was trying to find bliss!
Poverty is wealth
France is bacon
If I don’t own my phone, then I’m not paying for it. Period.
Exactly. No further discussion whatsoever.
Locked phones are what led me into the rabbit hole of purchasing phones from manufacturer, since the carriers not only lock phones but hobble the OS.
It did mean understanding what was necessary for a phone to qualify for given carriers, but I can tech when I need to, and I tech for my friends when they need it.
In 2024, T Mobile and AT&T (and Verizon) have all demonstrated they do not engage in good faith commerce, and so right now they’re being sniveling little shits (quote me please) because the FCC and DoC are escaping regulatory capture.
That is to say, the end users are tired of their shit. Apple and Google, too.
My T-Mobile phone that’s been unlocked and moved over to Google Fi has the T-Mobile image whenever you start up the phone. I’ll only buy phones directly from the manufacturer now.
You’d have to flash new firmware for that to change. In the old days each phone was carrier specific and had to have the exact right firmware but now they’re fairly generic and are cross compatible (do your own research). You could check XDA Developers for the process.
“Rabbit hole”? Isn’t it as easy as just not going to a carrier’s store for it?
We always bought from generic tech stores, almost always big chain ones - never got a carrier-locked device. Is it different in the US?
If you get phones from the manufacturer they’re not labeled compatible with AT&T so much as that they have access to specific radio ranges and are controlled either by soft-stored codes or by a SIM card, and I’d buy the sim card from the service, and then stick it in my phone. The Sony I had for a while was compatible with both the T-Mobile and AT&T ranges, and I used a third party service that was an el-cheapo front for T-Mobile.
T-Mobile wanted me to pay extra for hot-spot use, but I got around that with software, which is like hacking the subscription seat warmers on your BMW.
Curiously, Apple phones will lock themselves (or did for a while… is it better now?) based on what service you initially connected them to, and you have to (had to, I hope) get their permission and pay fees to unlock it again.
The telecommunication companies are an oligopoly, so like a legal cartel, so they pull a lot of bullshit that we end users have to suffer. But it means I feel not a jot of guilt when I hack the hell out of it to extract services I didn’t pay for, since it’s all a grift anyway.
A lot of the big tech stores here in the US have separate counters for each of the major mobile carriers, and sell devices that are locked into those contracts. You can sometimes get unlocked phones from big tech stores, but most of what they carry is locked to a carrier.
Question: I bought my phone unlocked several years ago. I have AT&T. But apparently, because I didn’t buy it from AT&T, my visual voicemail refuses to work
I’ve tried and given up several times to fix it, and it’s not a huge deal; I just miss being able to check my voicemail without calling it.
Do you happen to know anything about this? Every “fix” I’ve found has failed so far
What exactly is “good faith commerce”?
That doesn’t seem to register as a coherent concept, considering good faith has to do with considering the whole of the interaction instead of one’s own side, and business is when each person handles only their own side of the equation.
Seems like an empty phrase to me, unless you can enlighten me.
Why does that even matter? Currently, if you have a locked phone and switch carriers, you have to buy an entirely new phone anyways.
At least this way, a user can pay once, and then hop around carriers depending on what’s cheap.
Also there’s no shot that locking users to phones costs that much because the unlocked version of a phone is only like 15-20% more expensive. Since when did you ever get a 70% discount on the MSRP of a phone for buying it locked??? They’re straight ass lying lmao
That’s the problem. You have to buy a brand new phone because your phone is locked. With this law if you bought your phone outright you could switch carriers within 2 months if you found a better deal and still keep your phone. Can’t currently do that in the US.
And the whole locking cost is made up. It’s simple to make a phone “unlocked”. The cost in inflated on purpose to create a need so they can offer locked at a discount.
Near monopolies say monopolistic behavior is good for you and does not only benefit them. More bullshit at 11.
You know what the difference between a near monopoly and an actual monopoly is?
In one scenario there’s competition and in the other one there’s not. Basically one’s a monopoly and the other isn’t.
If near monopolies agree to rules sets with one another, they can effectively monopolize. That’s why there are regulations in place to prevent that behavior but we’re consistently seeing the lack of enforcement of those rules. Sure there are still other telecoms other than these two, but in the US each of the major telecoms are guilty of this sort of behavior, and while phone unlock is allowed they create unnecessary barriers to make it more difficult for consumers to do this, at the benefit of themselves. It’s similar malicious compliance to providing an ability to cancel a subscription but making it difficult to do so for consumers so they give up trying.
Meanwhile Verizon has already been unlocking after 6 months
For my past 3 phones I just bought straight from the manufacturer.
I recommend it and hope phone unlocking gets pushed through despite their whining
I haven’t financed a phone since 2008. I copped a fee for ending a 24 month contract a day early.
I just buy a cheap outright handset, flash a community ROM and avoid everything my telco offers past a $20 basic service. Handsets with community support go for years past what the manufacturers support.
I’ve done this almost from the very beginning (back in the 90s) and always had very small mobile communications costs because I could easilly change providers and plans and even do things like use a local SIM card whilst abroad to avoid roaming costs.
That’s such bullshit. Locked phones are like google accounts. At the end of the 2 years of owning it supposedly, you end up with all this shit you accumulated and no way to save it anywhere practically.
