Locked Mobile Phones VS Unlocked Mobile PhonesNOKIA, the world’s largest maker of cellphones, has been running ads that read, “Open to Anything” and “Unlock your potential.”
The company wants cellphone buyers to know that its phones can be used with whatever carrier they choose, unlike a certain other phone that has been getting considerably more attention lately: Apple’s iPhone. That phone is locked, meaning it is intended to be used with AT&T, the only carrier Apple chose in the United States.
A Nokia spokesman says that the advertising campaign is not aimed at the iPhone. “A lot of people interpreted it as a shot at another product,” said Keith Nowak, a Nokia spokesman. “It wasn’t its intention, to be honest.”
Indeed, most phones sold in the United States are locked into the carrier that sold them. Nearly all mobile phone providers discount the price of the handset in exchange for a fixed contract. But even some phones sold at full price without contracts remain locked.
But that has not stopped many from unlocking phones, either with the permission of the carrier or, as is more commonly the case, without it. Apple said that nearly one of every six iPhones sold in the United States was bought with the intention of unlocking it.
Apple has tried to thwart the practice by updating the operating system software, which rendered any updated and unlocked phone useless. But rogue programmers were quickly back at it, and they say they have created software that makes it possible to break the newly updated software lock on the iPhone. As this knowledge spreads across the Internet, more and more Americans are becoming aware of the issues surrounding locked phones in general.
Though there are questions about the legality of the practice, more carriers are offering customers the option, even though it means a customer can use that phone with another carrier. T-Mobile says it unlocks its phones after an account has been active 90 days.
AT&T said it would unlock a handset once the customer had fulfilled the terms of a contract. It will sell customers an unlocked phone at full price — with the exception of the iPhone. Sprint agreed in a class-action lawsuit settlement proposal last week that it would provide the unlock codes to customers after their contracts expired so the phones could be used with other carriers. Verizon says it does not unlock its phones.
All this locking and unlocking is most relevant to the type of mobile phone that is widely used around the globe: those on a Global System for Mobile communication system, or GSM network. In the United States, only AT&T and T-Mobile are GSM providers. The other major carriers, Verizon and Sprint, use a different standard known as CDMA, for Code Division Multiple Access, which is more common in Japan and South Korea.
The advantage of having an unlocked GSM phone is that the phone can easily be used in other countries at a fraction of the usual charge by buying a local prepaid SIM card, the microchip that contains the telephone number and other data. Otherwise, consumers are left paying exorbitant international roaming fees.
In the United States, however, some carriers — and in the case of the iPhone, a phone maker — say that unlocking the phone may violate the company warranty and thus the company will not repair or replace it if something goes awry.
Some imply that it is not legal to unlock a phone, but the legal issues are murky at best.
A subsection of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 could be interpreted as saying that anyone who unlocks a phone for someone else or tells others how to do it might face legal action.
Some legal scholars, like Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an authority on digital copyright law, have argued that interpreting the act that way has little to do with protecting copyrights, and more to do with limiting competition. The Librarian of Congress, the office that determines what things are covered under the copyright act, exempts the unlocking of mobile phones from the law.
Several recent cases support Professor Crawford’s view. In one of those cases, Lexmark, a printer manufacturer, tried to use the act to sue a company that made compatible ink cartridges. In another, a garage door opener manufacturer tried to sue a rival company for making a universal door opener.
In both instances, federal courts ruled that these cases were not about preventing copyright infringement, but rather about stifling competition, Professor Crawford said.
“Courts have said you shouldn’t use the D.M.C.A. to leverage your copyright monopoly into other markets,” she said.
Like the exclusive AT&T deal in the United States, Apple is currently pursuing deals with carriers overseas, and has announced exclusive agreements with O2 in Britain, T-Mobile in Germany and Orange in France.
Some European lawyers, however, have noted that certain countries require mobile phones be sold in an unlocked state, which would eliminate Apple’s exclusivity. Antoine Gendreau, a French intellectual property lawyer, said in an e-mail message that a seller must offer the product without a service plan even if he can sell it with a service plan at a lower price.
“A purchase with a service plan that is locked on an operator’s network must be able to be unlocked so it can be used on any network at the request of the buyer, and must be done at no charge after six months,” Mr. Gendreau said. Orange has said it would sell an unlocked phone.
Short of booking a trip to France to get an unlocked cellphone, customers who want one will have to turn to the online gray market: Craigslist and eBay.
Today, there are plenty of vendors who will unlock phones or sell unlocked phones. Prices for an unlocked iPhone range from $400 to $700, depending on whether the phone has a four-gigabyte or eight-gigabyte storage capacity. Similar services are available online for unlocking nearly any GSM handset. Sometimes small and independent mobile phone retailers will even unlock certain models for a small fee, usually $50 or less. Some even openly advertise the phones or the service.
Unlocking an iPhone is something that anyone can do, says Kyle Matthews, the 25-year-old co-founder of ModMyiFone.com. He said that the whole process of installing various pieces of software takes a little less than an hour to complete.
“People that have no technological experience would be a little put off by it, because it’s a little bit of work, but for anyone who has basic computer knowledge it’s really easy to do,” he said. He has personally unlocked approximately 50 iPhones, he said.
For more popular handset models like BlackBerrys and Treos, various online guides exist at sites like unlockblackberry.net and 680unlock.com/. For other models, however guides may be more difficult to find on the Internet.
Professor Crawford thinks that the attention to unlocking the iPhone could help Americans realize that they may want to have more choice when it comes to mobile operators.
“There hasn’t been much consumer incentive in the past to challenge the wireless carriers controls,” she said. “This may lead consumers in the U.S. to rise up and demand that their phones be unlocked.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/technology/personaltech/01basics.html
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