iPhone unlocked in Canada, UK

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/iphone-4-is-unlocked-in-canada-too/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/apple-iphone-4-pre-orders-are-go/

I believe this is the correct business model to use. In the US it's not as important because it seems most people are on Verizon/Sprint making the big deal about smartphones. T-Mobile is the only other GSM provider anyway, so even an unlocked iPhone would only serve one more slice of the pie, and it seems even the N1 never made it as big there. In fact I see more people talking about N1s on AT&T than on T-Mobile even before the UMTS 850 version was released. So I think even though the UK and Canada benefit immensely from this, the US is not as majorly screwed. I suppose as a T-Mo user you can feel screwed though.

I hope that when the AT&T exclusivity contract ends that Apple does pursue an unlocked market in the US. I think it's time to put an end to exclusive phones, special carrier versions of phones, contract only crap, etc etc. There needs to be options, and if unlocked phones is a model in the rest of the world I don't see why we can't pursue it either.

 

[WelshBloke]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/iphone-4-is-unlocked-in-canada-too/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/apple-iphone-4-pre-orders-are-go/



I believe this is the correct business model to use. In the US it's not as important because it seems most people are on Verizon/Sprint making the big deal about smartphones. T-Mobile is the only other GSM provider anyway, so even an unlocked iPhone would only serve one more slice of the pie, and it seems even the N1 never made it as big there. In fact I see more people talking about N1s on AT&T than on T-Mobile even before the UMTS 850 version was released. So I think even though the UK and Canada benefit immensely from this, the US is not as majorly screwed. I suppose as a T-Mo user you can feel screwed though.

I hope that when the AT&T exclusivity contract ends that Apple does pursue an unlocked market in the US. I think it's time to put an end to exclusive phones, special carrier versions of phones, contract only crap, etc etc. There needs to be options, and if unlocked phones is a model in the rest of the world I don't see why we can't pursue it either.

You can buy other (non Apple) phones unlocked though cant you?

Seems to be more of an Apple USA model than a general USA model.

 

[pm]

It's hard to buy unlocked (non-Apple) phones in the US. Not impossible, but definitely not at all common. Pretty much all smartphones sold in the US are sold at a subsidy, under contract and are locked to the carrier, although you can often call for the unlock code.

Even if you pay full price for a phone - walk into a store and give them $500 - the phone will frequently be locked to either T-Mobile or AT&T. And then Sprint and Verizon are on CDMA and it's even more rare to take a phone from one network to the other.

 

[TheWart]

Things have also been complicated by the fact that Verizon's use of CDMA means they don't use SIM cards. That has fostered specialization and carrier-exclusivity.

I think that the US will move towards a more unlocked model as carriers move to LTE/4G. It will take a while though.

 

[WelshBloke]

It's hard to buy unlocked (non-Apple) phones in the US. Not impossible, but definitely not at all common. Pretty much all smartphones sold in the US are sold at a subsidy, under contract and are locked to the carrier, although you can often call for the unlock code.

Even if you pay full price for a phone - walk into a store and give them $500 - the phone will frequently be locked to either T-Mobile or AT&T. And then Sprint and Verizon are on CDMA and it's even more rare to take a phone from one network to the other.

Do the big phone makers not sell direct in the US then?

Unlock codes are easy to get hold of though.

 

[WelshBloke]

Things have also been complicated by the fact that Verizon's use of CDMA means they don't use SIM cards. That has fostered specialization and carrier-exclusivity.

I think that the US will move towards a more unlocked model as carriers move to LTE/4G. It will take a while though.

I can see that being a bit of a problem, complicates the second hand market.

 

[pm]

Do the big phone makers not sell direct in the US then?

In a word, no.

Although less succintly, they do but it's uncommon. You can go to Best Buy (like UK's Dixons) and they have a handful of models. But there aren't any good PAYG data plans in the US for GSM phones (there's another thread by Oxman about that), so that sort of ruins things because if you are going to sign a data plan anyway, you might as well get them to give you a "free", or heavily subsidized, smartphone. So then there's no reason to shell out $300+ to buy an unlocked no-contract model.

Beyond the lack of PAYG data plans, there's only big GSM carriers in the US, T-Mobile and AT&T, and they don't share a common UMTS/HSPA frequency, so taking a 3G phone from one to the other generally loses you 3G data coverage since very few phones cover both 3G bands (in fact, I can't think of any).

Beyond even this technical problem, one weird thing in the US is that cell phone callers pay for inbound calls as well as outbound. So you have more need of a plan. If you call a friend in the UK, only one of you is paying for it. So if you call your friend 50% of the time, and your friend calls you the other 50%, then the two of you have used half the "minutes" that you would need in the US for this same activity.

On the CDMA front, there are more options for PAYG data plans and actually quite a few more medium-sized carriers (a smaller carrier Cricket is actually big enough to start to approach "the big 4"), there are no SIMS to move around - transferring a phone from one carrier to another requires porting something akin to a serial number - but the carriers are very reluctant to port a phone from one carrier, and most don't support it at all.

As was said, I can see in the distant future a time when the US is moved over to LTE that it would be possible to have a European/Asian/African, anything-other-than-US, style PAYG system where you can buy a phone and shop for a plan and then pay for what you use... but we are a long way from there right now with the mish-mash of protocols, signalling schemes, technologies, frequencies and locked-in carriers that we have now.

It's a bit odd for a country like the US which is normally thought of as being on the leading edge of technology to have such an odd uncoordinated system. I blame it on the lack of regulation (there are a lot of Americans that feel strongly that the goverment should not interfere).

 

[WelshBloke]

In a word, no.

Although less succintly, they do but it's uncommon. You can go to Best Buy (like UK's Dixons) and they have a handful of models. But there aren't any good PAYG data plans in the US for GSM phones (there's another thread by Oxman about that), so that sort of ruins things because if you are going to sign a data plan anyway, you might as well get them to give you a "free", or heavily subsidized, smartphone. So then there's no reason to shell out $300+ to buy an unlocked no-contract model.

Beyond the lack of PAYG data plans, there's only big GSM carriers in the US, T-Mobile and AT&T, and they don't share a common UMTS/HSPA frequency, so taking a 3G phone from one to the other generally loses you 3G data coverage since very few phones cover both 3G bands (in fact, I can't think of any).

Beyond even this technical problem, one weird thing in the US is that cell phone callers pay for inbound calls as well as outbound. So you have more need of a plan. If you call a friend in the UK, only one of you is paying for it. So if you call your friend 50% of the time, and your friend calls you the other 50%, then the two of you have used half the "minutes" that you would need in the US for this same activity.

On the CDMA front, there are more options for PAYG data plans and actually quite a few more medium-sized carriers (a smaller carrier Cricket is actually big enough to start to approach "the big 4"), there are no SIMS to move around - transferring a phone from one carrier to another requires porting something akin to a serial number - but the carriers are very reluctant to port a phone from one carrier, and most don't support it at all.

As was said, I can see in the distant future a time when the US is moved over to LTE that it would be possible to have a European/Asian/African, anything-other-than-US, style PAYG system where you can buy a phone and shop for a plan and then pay for what you use... but we are a long way from there right now with the mish-mash of protocols, signalling schemes, technologies, frequencies and locked-in carriers that we have now.

It's a bit odd for a country like the US which is normally thought of as being on the leading edge of technology to have such an odd uncoordinated system. I blame it on the lack of regulation (there are a lot of Americans that feel strongly that the goverment should not interfere).

That all sounds horribly messy and anti-consumer!

I wonder if some of it is the vast size of the US as well?

 

[pm]

That all sounds horribly messy and anti-consumer!

I wonder if some of it is the vast size of the US as well?

It's certainly not pro-consumer. The big four (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) can say all they want that the US cell phone market is super competitve and that the consumer benefits from this, but I don't see the US cell phone market being remotely as competitive as I see other countries that I've visited. When one company raised texting rates to $0.20 per message, pretty much all of the others followed within months. Now that AT&T is limiting unlimited plans, I really think by the end of the year the other carriers will do the same. If you look at the plans available, you really need to move to one of the regional carriers to get a decent deal, and even they don't offer really good data plans - just good calling plans.

I don't think the size of the country is to blame. Both New Zeland and Australia have a lot of space and not a lot of people and they have better - in my humble opinion - cell phone systems than the US in terms of what you pay for what you get, competition and general data rates and urban coverage. If you get out in the middle of the Austalian outback, you don't have a signal... but then in the US I drove through eastern Montana and Wyoming yesterday and I never had much of a signal outside of the towns at all.

In Wyoming and Montana, there was no 3G and while there was EDGE, the backend datarate for it seemed severely limited. My wife tried to check her email on my iPhone in Sheridan, WY, yesterday on AT&T and while there were 5 bars, and an "E" for EDGE, she couldn't connect at all. We drove from Rawlins, Wyoming to Dubois, Wyoming - over 200 miles (320 km) without any AT&T cell phone signal at all except in Lander, Wyoming. Pretty much the whole time for 3 hours, my cell phone showed 1 bar, or "no service". AT&T says that it's covered by "partners" on their map, but in my experience, there's more or less no service the whole way. Verizon's map looks similar... but I haven't used Verizon, so I can't say.

Still, in the last week, I crossed about 650 miles - or close to the distance from Cornwall to Inverness - driving from Fort Collins, Colorado to Bozeman, Montana, and I don't think even 20% of that distance had a decent AT&T cell phone signal. So if they aren't building out towers in the middle of nowhere to give everyone a signal, then I don't see how that can be an excuse for why we have such a funky cell phone system compared to the rest of the world.

I blame the US attitude towards regulation. There's a general feeling in the US that regulation inhibits innovation. And that may well be true. But lack of regulation results in a mish-mash of incompatible technologies.

 

[Zebo]

Things have also been complicated by the fact that Verizon's use of CDMA means they don't use SIM cards. That has fostered specialization and carrier-exclusivity.

I think that the US will move towards a more unlocked model as carriers move to LTE/4G. It will take a while though.

The CDMA Carriers all have a database of phones that are licensed to their channel so if you try and call in an ESN for a verizon phone to sprint it won't work because that ESN is not found in Sprint's database. If you try and buy a non contracted CDMA phone and call into Sprint it will not work either. You can change ESN but Carriers got congress to make it felony to do so. Esentially you're fucked although some Sprint phones will work with Boost, for now. Some Sprint and Verizon will work with Cricket and Metro PCS but only because they are struggling for any dollars they can get do they allow this.

No they won't. USA carriers intentionally keeps standards nonglobalized and phone carrier specific so they can charge you out the ass for international roaming and for proprietary software and advertising. No CDMA phone will even work international. T-Mobile and AT&T lock your phone to their sim so you can't just slip a cheap paygo sim while in Germany and must roam.

 

[Zebo]

It's certainly not pro-consumer. .

If you delve into carrier locking, perpetual copyright (see mickey mouse rule), DMCA and a million other issues USA is probably the least prosumer country on the planet. Only thing I know we have better is right to return stuff at Wal-mart and Costco especially compare to Europe.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

SNIP.

I think AT&T hates the routes you drive

I drove from SF to LA along the 5 and my friend plugged his iPhone in and we had streaming radio all the way. Not only 2G but 3G connection obviously