Who owns your cell phone?

Typically, when you get a cell phone from your carrier, it is locked to their network. The rationale, I suppose, is tied to the subsidy that is implicit in your multi-year contract. The $49 phone obviously costs much more, but the price is subsidized by the carrier that you sign up with.

But, why can’t consumers use their phone with another carrier? After all, the contract commits the customer to keep paying. The subsidy will get recovered. And what about customers that don’t want a contract? Or who pay full price for their phone?

Is it legal to get the phone unlocked? Many independent dealers will unlock your phone for a negotiable fee. Unlocking a GSM phone allows a user to pop any SIM into the phone, enabling more controllable costs when travelling, avoiding often outrageous roaming fees.

The US copyright office recently had two rulings that affect this. One was to rule that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act covers the software lock on the phone, meaning that it would be an offense to tamper with the access control technology absent a specific exemption. However, they also granted precisely that exemption.

What are the rules in Canada? Who owns your cell phone?

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GSM, DMCA, wireless