Verizon wants to keep your phone locked for 6 months — here's why
Verizon is looking to keep its devices locked to its plans for longer, meaning you may have to wait months before you can unlock or transfer your device.
According to a recent report from Ars Technica, Verizon is currently petitioning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Trump administration to allow it to lock phones for a total of six months. At the time of writing, Verizon only requires customers to keep the phone locked for 60 days.
If this petition goes through, it will put the company on par with AT&T's six-month period. Although both carriers don't ask nearly as much as T-Mobile, which keeps prepaid phones carrier-locked for 12-months.
Verizon's offering of 60 days before customers can unlock their phones results from two different rules the company agreed upon. The first came about when it purchased the licenses to use the 700 MHz spectrum back in 2008, which came with open access requirements. The second rule was part of the merger conditions that allowed Verizon to get approval to purchase TracFone back in 2021.
The reason for this is due, in Verizon's words, to unlocking phones encouraging theft while also being bad for customers.
According to Verizon's petition, "The Unlocking Rule applies only to particular providers—mainly Verizon—and distorts the marketplace in a critical US industry." It then goes on to state that, "The rule has resulted in unintended consequences that harm consumers, competition, and Verizon, while propping up international criminal organizations that profit from fraud, including device trafficking of subsidized devices from the United States. These bad actors target and harm American consumers and US carriers like Verizon for their own profit, by diverting unlocked trafficked devices to consumers in foreign countries."
The company has stated that, after purchasing TracFone, there was a "sharp increase" in the number of TracFone devices that were deactivated before the customers had made the necessary payments for Verizon to subsidize the device.
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Interestingly, this is something of a shift in the smartphone market as, under Biden, the FCC was considering a proposal for all carriers to set their unlock period at 60 days. However, as Ars Technica notes, that likely won't be happening thanks to the new FCC chairman Brendan Carr's focus on deregulation.
For many, this might be a big turn-off, especially as the shorter unlock window made Verizon very appealing.
If this news, alongside the recent Verizon outage, has made you consider moving to a new company, then we have a full breakdown of the best carriers at the moment that could help you find the right option for some of the best phones.
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