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It seems to me that a carrier should be able to lock a subsidized/financed device until it's paid off. That makes it possible for people who would otherwise not qualify for financing to have relatively up-to-date devices.
A carrier should not be able to lock a device that's paid off for any length of time.
Nah, I disagree.
It shouldn't matter to them who uses the phone or what provider you use on it, as long as you pay them of course.
This argument may have made sense a decade ago, but phones today aren't making the generational leaps and bounds with performance every year. Even the low end phones are just fine for most uses these days.
If you're poor, and I certainly have been, you shouldn't get into these contacts that ultimately cost you more. You buy a cheap phone from last year and put it on an MVNO that's cheap
I suppose it depends on whether you think regulation should be used to dissuade poor people from buying expensive phones. That seems like a reasonable enough goal, though I don't believe that's the proper role of government.
I've always bought phones outright, used when finances so dictated. I agree that's the wiser approach.
Except the proposed rule doesn't do that. It's only regarding carriers unlocking policies. The owner of the phone could still be under contact, and early termination fees would still apply. Carriers are still able to recoup any losses on the hardware through those fees. Requiring phones to be unlocked after 60 days changes none of that.
As things are now, a poor person would have to pay BOTH. An early termination fee AND then go buy a new phone if they wanted to switch to a new carrier before the (typically 2 year) contact is complete. They lose any money they've put into their current phone because it's locked to a carrier until they have been in good standing for the full 2 years.
So what it really depends on is if you think a poor person should be trapped with their current carrier until they finish the contract, unlock the phone and move to another, OR if they should be free to switch over to the competition at any time without onerous restrictions on hardware they have fully paid for via early termination fees.
Subsidized devices blur the line between a fee for terminating service early, and paying off the cost of the device. Perhaps the former should be banned to encourage competition, and the cost of the device and the service clearly separated. That way it's clear when the device is paid off and (in my imagined ideal regulatory scenario) must be unlocked.
They probably don't have to pay the fee. They might owe it legally, but the likely consequences for not paying are some impact on their credit score and inability to get service from that carrier under their own name for a while.
I would generally agree with you, but in this case, Verizon has already been subject to such a rule for over a decade as a condition of the 700MHz spectrum. Verizon does offer subsidized/financed devices like the other carriers, it just doesn't SIM lock them beyond the initial period.
Given this data point, I think it's a good idea to expand to the other carriers.