Senate unanimously passes bill to legalize cellphone unlocking

[Himanshu Arora]

Cellphone unlocking could soon become legal again after Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday cleared the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act through a unanimous consent agreement. The bill is now headed to the House for a vote before potentially becoming law.

Back in February, the House of Representatives passed a similar bill. However, it has one key difference. The House bill prohibits bulk unlocking, making it difficult to build a business around it, while the Senate bill does not contain any such provision. Now, both the bills are required to be synced up so a final version can be sent to President Barack Obama for a signature.

If the bill does indeed become law, it would make it easy for you to take your phones to another carrier when you switch service providers. However, if you are still under contract with your carrier and you bought a device at a subsidized price, the bill doesn't make it mandatory for the carrier to unlock your phone.

As of now, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits legally unlocking a carrier-restricted device. Although the Library of Congress earlier granted an "exemption" to copyright law, making cellphone unlocking legal, the exemption expired in 2013.

Last year, five major US carriers agreed to the FCC's demand to make it easier for consumers to unlock their mobile phones for use on a competitor's network.

Despite the government's efforts, there are some technical roadblocks that need to be addressed before consumers can freely use their unlocked phones on a different operator. For example, Verizon and Sprint use a technology called CDMA for their basic voice service. This technology does not use a SIM card, making it difficult for consumers to switch operators, as the unlocked device needs to be "provisioned" on the new carrier.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/57443-senate-unanimously-passes-bill-to-legalize-cellphone-unlocking.html

 

[oldikes]

Unanimously? in america?
O.O

 

[davislane1]

Unanimously? in america?
O.O

Don't seem so surprised. It only means there are demons buried somewhere in the bill's text.

 

[hahahanoobs]

[quote="RustyTech, post: 1416070, member: 344723"Regarding the article, I wonder what they mean when they say "provisioned"?[/quote]

Same as a modem. Its info has to be entered into the provders' sytem for it to have the ability to give you Internet access and be billed for it.

 

[robb213]

And in other news Rep. Blackburn of Tennessee proposed and got a bill passed in the House that plans to strip the FCC of its power to mandate what States can do with municipal broadband, and is on its way to the Senate.

 

[insect]

I unlock just so I can use custom ROMs. Don't care to switch carriers, just hate the crap software they put on it that use battery, randomly check location, etc. from the vendor and even more on top of that from the provide. Also the lack of updating is horrible. Some phones are still on Android 4.0 or less and haven't been updated. That's like keeping your PC on Windows XP and expecting to be secure.

One of the biggest complaints about Android phones over iPhone is that moving from phone to phone you get a different interface each time. What people don't realize is that Google never intended this and that vendors are f-ing up the ecosystem. If you run standard ASOP everything is the same phone to phone. From there you can build your add-ons, like dual-camera technology, etc. Why companies like Samsung (TouchWiz) and HTC (Sense) continue to build their own crap over top that bloat the phone is beyond me. The fact that people just "accept" it bugs me even more.

 

[TadMSTR]

I unlock just so I can use custom ROMs. Don't care to switch carriers, just hate the crap software they put on it that use battery, randomly check location, etc. from the vendor and even more on top of that from the provide. Also the lack of updating is horrible. Some phones are still on Android 4.0 or less and haven't been updated. That's like keeping your PC on Windows XP and expecting to be secure.

One of the biggest complaints about Android phones over iPhone is that moving from phone to phone you get a different interface each time. What people don't realize is that Google never intended this and that vendors are f-ing up the ecosystem. If you run standard ASOP everything is the same phone to phone. From there you can build your add-ons, like dual-camera technology, etc. Why companies like Samsung (TouchWiz) and HTC (Sense) continue to build their own crap over top that bloat the phone is beyond me. The fact that people just "accept" it bugs me even more.

The bill is about carrier unlocking, not bootloader unlocking. Two very different things. It was never illegal to unlock your bootloader. Doing so just voids your warranty, in most cases.