We Called on the FCC to End Cell Phone Carrier Locks Altogether

This month, the US Federal Communications Commission sought feedback on a welcome proposal to limit the frustrating practice of locking cell phones to specific carriers. Currently, most smartphone carriers are still able to lock phones, and they’re often slow to respond when consumers ask to have their phones unlocked.

We’ve been fighting this battle for over a decade, advocating for your right to unlock and fully use the devices you own. Now, as the FCC considers these new rules, we’ve stepped up once again to fight for your right to do what you want with the electronics you own.

The FCC has proposed a limited 60-day period of legal locking. We don’t think that goes far enough. So we teamed up with other consumer protection and advocacy groups—including the Public Interest Research Group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Repair Association, the Secure and Resilient Future Foundation, and Waveform.

And together, we called on the FCC to eliminate carrier locking altogether.

Roaming? Poor Coverage? Dual SIM? Lots of Good Reasons to Unlock

Why does unlocking matter? Imagine this: You’re about to go on an international trip, and you’ve just bought a brand-new phone—maybe your old one got lost or stolen, or maybe you just wanted to get the best camera for your trip. You’re planning to pop in a local SIM card when you land to avoid those pesky roaming charges (almost always a better value, as Gizmodo’s Florence Ion pointed out last week). But when you arrive, you find out that your shiny new phone is locked to your U.S. carrier. It’s a thousand-dollar paperweight, and you’re left with no real option but to buy another phone if you want to stay connected.

There are lots of perfectly valid reasons you might want to unlock your phone soon after buying it. Maybe you activate the phone to discover that your original carrier doesn’t have good coverage at your home or workplace. Maybe you want to use the phone’s dual-SIM feature for work, with a different carrier than your personal SIM. In our comment, we called the FCC’s attention to a selection of stories of consumers who needed their phones unlocked and met the requirements to do so, but carriers dragged the process out interminably.

Whatever your reasons for wanting an unlocked phone, we believe that your carrier shouldn’t be able to tell you what you can do with something you own.

Our Fight Against Carrier Locking

This all started back in 2013 when the U.S. Library of Congress let a key provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) expire. Suddenly, it was illegal for you to unlock your phone without your carrier’s permission. We knew this was wrong. After all, if you’ve paid for your phone, you should be able to do whatever you want with it, including switching carriers.

So, we jumped into the fray, raising awareness and rallying consumers to demand their right to unlock their own devices. We explained how carrier locking traps people in expensive contracts, limits their options, and ultimately costs everyone more. And while Congress eventually passed some legislation to allow unlocking, it didn’t go far enough.

Despite a voluntary agreement to allow unlocking, carriers didn’t agree to accept phones that had original been activated on other carriers’ networks. Voluntary agreements just don’t cut it. Too often, these agreements leave people stuck with locked devices due to technical or procedural issues, with little recourse.

Plus, the law didn’t stop carriers from locking phones in the first place—and because unlocking generally requires willing participation from carriers, many consumers have found themselves left high and dry when their carrier delays or outright refuses a request. Some customers have only found success at getting their phones unlocked when they’ve complained directly to the FCC.

Today, many consumers remain confused about the legality of unlocking, which hurts the resale value of unlocked phones and leads to unnecessary waste.

60 Days of Unfree Hardware is 60 Days Too Many

Fast forward to 2024, and the FCC is back at it, looking to protect consumers from the harmful practice of carrier locking once and for all. But we don’t think their proposal of a 60-day period of legal locks goes far enough. Why allow locking at all? Why prevent consumers from freely using their own things for 60 days?

That’s why we’ve teamed up with other consumer protection advocacy groups to push for bold action. We’re telling the FCC that even a 60-day lock-in period is too long and just adds unnecessary headaches for consumers. Instead, the FCC should eliminate the 60-day lock-in period and make it mandatory for phones to be unlocked automatically at the point of sale. This approach has already been successful in countries like Canada and the UK, where handset locking has been done away with entirely. It’s time for the U.S. to catch up and ensure that when you buy a phone, it’s truly yours to do with as you please.

Why This Matters Beyond Your Wallet

Ending carrier locks isn’t just about giving you more freedom to choose your carrier; it’s also about strengthening the secondary market for smartphones. Unlocked phones are worth more and easier to resell, which means more people will trade in or sell their old devices instead of letting them collect dust in a drawer.

This could significantly reduce electronic waste, which is a huge problem. In 2022 alone, the world generated 4.9 billion kilograms of e-waste from smartphones and other telecom gear. By getting rid of carrier locks, we can help cut down on that waste.

Continuing the Fight

We’ve been in this fight for over a decade, and we’re not backing down now. From the early days of raising awareness to pushing for legislative change, we’ve always stood up for your right to unlock and fully use the devices you own.

However the FCC moves to address carrier locks, we will continue to fight to end other kinds of locks on reuse of hardware: Activation Lock keeps millions of smartphones and tablets from being reused each year. Parts pairing continues to keep game consoles from being repaired.

Whatever you’ve bought, you own it, and you should be able to choose what happens to it.