No Longer Consumer Friendly: T-Mobile Fights FCC Phone Unlocking Effort

Back in July, the Biden FCC voted to make unlocking your phone easier. As a result, the agency is now crafting new rules that would require that wireless carriers unlock customers’ mobile phones within 60 days of activation, even if you’re still under contract.

Wireless giant T-Mobile, which used to have a consumer-friendly reputation until its merger with Sprint, has been fighting the plan. First, by claiming that recent rulings by our corrupt Supreme Court effectively make FCC consumer protection efforts illegal. Then by claiming to regulators (falsely) that burdensome device restrictions help competition and reduce consumer prices.

Consumer groups are correctly punching back, noting in their own filings that such restrictions exist specifically to mute competition and make switching your handset between carriers artificially more difficult:

“Wireless users are subject to unnecessary restrictions in the form of locked devices, which tie them to their service providers even when better options may be available. Handset locking practices limit consumer freedom and lessen competition by creating an artificial technological barrier to switching providers.”

T-Mobile has actually been making such restrictions worse. The company recently increased its locking period for one of its brands, Metro by T-Mobile, from 180 days to 365 days.

This is all par for the course for a company that promised all manner of amazing innovations if it was allowed to merge with Sprint, only to turn around and immediately stop competing on price and fire a bunch of employees. The company’s reputation for being different from AT&T and Verizon evaporated, and most of the company’s “uncarrier” promotions have become nap-inducing.

Ironically Verizon, which used to be among the worst when it came to device restrictions (recall it even tried to lock customers to its own GPS apps by blocking competitors), isn’t fighting the proposal because it already unlocks its devices after 60 days as per conditions affixed to its spectrum licenses.

It took decades of dragging Verizon kicking and screaming to get to that point. Still, current unlocking requirements are a mish mash of requirements (many voluntary) usually affixed to either merger conditions or the use of certain spectrum. That’s resulted in a broad variety of different restrictions among carriers, many of which continue to harm competition.

The FCC’s new rules should accelerate and streamline consistent rules among what’s left of the sector’s competitors. You’d just hope that the FCC doesn’t make too many concessions to industry lobbyists during the rule-crafting process.