With Verizon seeking permission to lock phones to its network for six months or longer instead of the current 60 days, a coalition of advocacy groups yesterday urged the Federal Communications Commission to reject the cellular carrier’s petition.
“Phone locking distorts market competition, raises switching costs, and contributes to unnecessary e-waste,” the groups said in a filing. “It impedes consumers’ ability to take full advantage of the devices they already own, forces them to purchase new phones unnecessarily, and reduces their freedom to choose more affordable or higher-quality service options. It undermines price discipline among carriers, makes it harder for smaller and prepaid-focused providers to compete, and reduces the availability of high-quality used devices on the secondary market.”
The FCC filing was submitted by Public Knowledge, the Benton Foundation, the Canadian Repair Coalition, Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, iFixit, the Fulu Foundation, the Open Technology Institute at New America, law professor Aaron Perzanowski, Repair.org, and the Software Freedom Conservancy.
Numerous individual phone users also wrote to the FCC. “Verizon’s argument that unlocked phones are against the public interest is just wrong,” one user wrote. “It stifles competition by making it harder to vote with your wallet and switch carriers. In fact I recently left Verizon because of a record amount of price hikes within a single year.”
“If you buy a phone, you should not be able to lock it down forever to a carrier,” another wrote. “People have the option to change carriers for better coverage, price, customer service, etc. Do not allow the big cell carriers to stifle competition for safety reasons!”
Verizon looks to benefit from Republican FCC
Verizon is trying to cash in on the current FCC leadership’s quest to eliminate as many telecom rules as possible. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr opened a “Delete, Delete, Delete” proceeding in order to identify rules that should be scrapped, and Verizon submitted a formal request to waive handset unlocking rules that it agreed to in order to gain access to spectrum and complete a merger. Verizon’s petition got support from police unions and conservative groups.
