The White House Responds to Cell Phone Unlocking Petition with Complete Agreement!

[zomnomnombie]

This is bad news guys.

-If the White House agrees then Congress is going to disagree.

-Congress passes the laws.

-Congress passes harsher laws saying the administration is trying to "destroy jobs."

-President vetoes.

-We're back where we started.

-Or Congress passes the law inserted into some other law package that the President cannot refuse, military funding or something like that.

-We're worse than where we started.

 

[kodiak799]

Locked-in contracts are really overrated IMO. The deals and prices don't move enough or separate enough to go jumping willy-nilly. The vast majority of people just don't do this, not with cell providers, not with cable, banks, etc...

I was with Sprint for a number of years until I got fed-up with dropped calls. Been with VZW now for over 10 years and have no intention of switching. Service still matters to me, and I travel so I really don't see an alternative.

Being locked-in for 1-2 years is really not a big deal. The vast majority of people are perfectly happy with their service and simply go in for new subsidized phone every two years (many not even that often). Just look at turn - VZW has been <2% and AT&T and Sprint 2-3x that, despite the fact that with 2-yr contracts as many as 50% of their customer could jump every year.

This is all a nice free market thing and will benefit some people. But there just aren't very many people who are going to jump mid-contract AND not sign a new one to get a subsidized phone. Maybe phones are getting good enough now that it will change, which isn't to say perhaps 1-2M people take advantage (just like 1% of the market).

Bottom line is I just don't see this opening up some magical box of consumer goodness.