30 October 2007

Sprint Nextel Settles Lawsuit on mobile phone locking

This story was reported late in the week last week. Basically, Sprint agrees to provide unlock codes for subscribers switching to other service providers. As reported by Forbes, this still has to be reviewed by the Superior Court. The fact that it is a settlement suggests that it will not be appealed (but you never know).

Do you think other carriers will follow suit? Since the settlement only applies to Sprint, they don't need to, but do you think they will feel obliged to do so for competitive reasons?

2 comments:

YUN DU said...

I am curious about the way of using mobile in US. I donot know other countries, in China, we subscribers just need to choose the carrier, after that, we can get a sim card, so we can buy or alter the cellphones whenever i want to buy or alter. I think this kind of service gives more options to subscribers.
In US, if I chose Sprint, I have no way to buy the Iphone.
I want to hear the people from other countries, what do they think about it and what do their country carrers do?

alecwmu said...

Following, Yun Du's commentary. In my country (Mexico) is pretty much the same, People can buy the cellphones wherever they want, then they just get a SIM card from any provider. what is more, we don't need to sign a 2-year contract, it is more popular to buy some cards that will give you some minutes to make calls, and when you run out of minutes you just go and get a new card. I think that for us is easier to have unlocked phones because we only GSM, while in the United States apart from GSM, CDMA is also used, which are non-compatible technologies.