- Verizon is asking the FCC to waive its 60-day phone unlocking requirement
- Droves of public comments oppose the waiver, with consumers ratcheting up calls for more unlocked phones
- Law enforcement groups support Verizon’s request, but rivals like EchoStar say it makes sense for the rule to be applied uniformly to everyone
Ask and ye shall receive. That’s exactly what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did when it sought public comment on Verizon’s petition for a waiver to its 60-day handset unlocking requirements. Now the FCC is getting an earful.
Many of the comments appear to come from everyday citizens who are fed up with corporate greed and want the freedom to take their handsets wherever they darn well please. But they’re oddly specific to be coming from random consumers. For example, they say Verizon agreed to 60-day handset unlocking policies when it bought discounted 700 MHz spectrum licenses in 2008 and acquired prepaid MVNO TracFone in 2021, and those policies should stick.
Wireless service providers routinely lock phones to their networks as a way to ensure the phones remain active only on their networks, especially when they provide discounts or subsidies on the phones and expect to get a return back via service contracts. Under Verizon’s current policy, it unlocks phones after 60 days regardless if they were purchased at full price or on an installment plan.
Other than a stipulation that T-Mobile agreed to as part of its acquisition of Mint Mobile, Verizon is the pretty much the only one of the Big 3 carriers held to this 60-day requirement thanks to the aforementioned transactions. Perhaps seeing an opportunity to change the situation with the new Trump administration, Verizon in May filed a request for waiver to get the 60-day phone unlocking requirement removed.
Verizon argues the change is necessary because the current handset unlocking provisions cause increased handset fraud, unfairly single out (mostly) Verizon and are outdated in today’s environment where the FCC is determined to “delete, delete, delete” when it comes to cumbersome regulations.
In June, the FCC issued a Public Notice seeking comments from industry stakeholders and the public at large about Verizon’s waiver request, with the first round of comments coming due this week.
Those anti-Verizon comments
Fierce did a little back-of-the-envelope tally of the comments in the FCC’s electronic database and found that many of the remarks appear to come from everyday people who are not in favor of letting Verizon off the hook when it comes to its 60-day handset unlocking requirements.
However, many of the comments are duplicative, i.e., it looks like a robot cut and pasted boilerplate copy into the system or clicked a link and voila, their opposition was filed in much the same script as other commentors. It’s reminiscent of the time Starlink recruited people to file comments about Dish Network’s use of the 12 GHz band, although this time it’s not nearly as massive an effort.
Full disclosure: More than 200 comments were filed in this docket and Fierce didn’t read every single one of them. We reviewed about 60 of the mostly anti-Verizon remarks before concluding that was enough to give us a pretty good idea of what’s going on here. And to be clear, the FCC’s decision-making process, while extremely political these days, traditionally isn’t based on a popularity contest, so take that into account.
Here’s a sample of a comment from someone identified as John Doe: “I do not want my phones locked for longer periods, period.” Or this one: “With features such as Dual SIM, I think customers should be given an option to unlock their phone when requested (for any reason), and there should be an easier route to Unlock a carrier-locked phone,” from someone who identified only as “A N.”
Law enforcement agencies back Verizon
One of Verizon’s arguments for ending the handset unlocking policy is that it encourages bad actors to buy phones that are unlocked and funnel them to other countries for resale. That was a problem that TracFone fought for years – criminals buying up loads of phones, removing SIM cards and reselling them for higher prices overseas.
Citing similar problems today, several law enforcement agencies filed comments in support of Verizon’s waiver request, including the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA), Virginia Beach Police Benevolent Association, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations Agents Association, Salt Lake Valley Law Enforcement Association, Toledo Police Patrolman’s Association and Sergeants Benevolent Association.
According to IUPA, law enforcement professionals across the country are seeing more and more unlocked and untraceable phones being exploited by criminal networks for illegal activities ranging from identity theft and narcotics trafficking to the coordination of cartel operations and the fencing of stolen goods.
But a contingent of consumer advocacy groups, including Public Knowledge, Benton Foundation and Consumer Reports, filed in opposition to Verizon’s proposal, saying that its fraud argument is unconvincing, among other things.
Of course, fraud and trafficking are legitimate concerns, but the consumer groups are calling BS on Verizon’s attempt to pin the problem primarily on unlocking.
For one thing, other carriers with longer unlocking periods, like AT&T and T-Mobile, also report high rates of device fraud and trafficking. For another, Verizon already has the tools to detect and respond to fraud within the 60-day period where it can flag suspicious purchases and pursue legal or contractual acts against bad actors. Ultimately, device fraud is a law enforcement issue – not one that should be addressed through an extension of lock durations across the board, the groups argue.
EchoStar, while not exactly gaining favor from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr these days, pointed out that Verizon is correct in that current unlocking rules created a “patchwork regulatory landscape” that harms competition. But rather than granting Verizon’s waiver request, EchoStar is urging the FCC to issue uniform industry-wide unlocking rules that apply equally to all carriers along the lines that were proposed in a 2024 proceeding.
“As EchoStar previously explained, a uniform, industry-wide unlocking rule will relieve consumers of the burden of navigating the various unlocking requirements currently imposed by carriers, making it easier to switch providers and enhancing competition in the wireless market to the benefit of all consumers,” the company told the FCC.
Making it easier to switch providers certainly would behoove EchoStar, whose Boost Mobile service hasn’t exactly been going gangbusters since Dish Network acquired it as part of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. But that’s another story.
In the 2024 proceeding, the FCC voted 5-0 to open a Notice of Public Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking comment on a range of issues related applying a 60-day unlocking requirement on all wireless service providers. At the time, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr – now the chairman of the FCC – noted the “patchwork” of unlocked phone requirements and expressed support for the opportunity to “create a more level playing field” when it comes to phone unlocking obligations.
We’re not sure how these chips are going to fall, but the FCC’s next round of comments on this is due July 21, and hopefully, we’ll know more by then.