US Carriers Required to Unlock Off-Contract Cell Phones

In regard to the policy agreements laid down by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) about the unlocking of devices, all major wireless companies in the US have given their word that they all will abide by those guidelines. Initially proposed in 2013, these guidelines specify that network carriers disclose their policies on both prepaid and postpaid unlocking of a device. The guidelines also require that these players should offer unlocks to all owners of postpaid devices and prepaid devices after one year, to inform customers when their hardware qualifies for unlocking, to comply within two business days to any requests received an unlock, and to unlock devices for deployed military personnel.

The deadline for implementing the guidelines and policies by CTIA was the 11^th of February which means that at present, all major US carriers are expected to be on the same page. However, all carriers may not adopt the same policies regarding the time they unlock the said products or which devices they’ll unlock while still on contract.

Back in 2006 and 2010, the Library of Congress conceded exceptions to the DMCA’s ban on bypassing any kind of copy protection and allowed the users to legally unlock their devices. It continued to refuse to yield the exemption in 2012, citing the fact that many carriers offered some form or another of the unlocking policy.

While this held true, so far as it went, it also brought to the surface one of the problems in the DMCA as it currently exists. The ban on bypassing any form of copy protection, whatever reason it may be, shows that there’s no guaranteed right to keep doing so when a Library of Congress exception expires. This actually meant that carriers may have chosen to stop offering unlocking options without leaving end users any form of recourse.

 

The mere act of unlocking any device doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the phone can be moved between carriers. Compatibility between vendors is based on the phone’s radio and configuration. Therefore, users will still need to evaluate which devices can be taken to which networks on a case-by-case basis.