{"id":3710,"date":"2010-06-28T06:54:53","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T10:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=3710"},"modified":"2010-06-25T07:45:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T11:45:09","slug":"unintended-consumer-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=3710","title":{"rendered":"Unintended consumer consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Don’t Lock My Freedom<\/a> website purports to represent consumer interests, when it is quite possible the net effect of its advocacy will be to raise initial phone prices and long term service costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An article on Cartt.ca<\/a> highlights\u00a0these key flaws in the overly simplistic viewpoint that appears to have motivated\u00a0the proposal\u00a0to require wireless service providers to unlock phones.<\/p>\n

The organizers of the website\u00a0and the legislative supporters\u00a0ignore the fact that there are already lots of alternate channels for people to buy phones without locks. There are service providers who have announced that they will unlock phones for their subscribers. Thanks to on-line third party sites like Tiger Direct, anyone who wants can buy unlocked phones, even if they aren’t in major metropolitan areas. Do a search for “unlock codes” and you will find lots of options at pretty low prices.<\/p>\n

In other words, the marketplace is working without government intervention to dictate specific business models to the service providers. Now, I know that some will argue that most phones are being bought from the wireless service providers and have contracts associated with them. Maybe that is because people like the subsidies that they are receiving? Or they appreciate the ability to call the service providers’ technical support lines and have them recognize the model number and provide help.<\/p>\n

Michael Geist is quoted in the Cartt.ca article saying:<\/p>\n

In certain respects, this was an odd question to even have to ask. No one would ever question whether consumers have the right to tinker with their car or to use the same television if they switch providers from cable to satellite, yet the wireless industry somehow convinced the public that unlocking their phones \u2013 consumers\u2019 own property \u2013 was wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How many\u00a0people who buy a Chevy expect a Mercedes dealer to fix their transmission for free? Or vice versa? Would a\u00a0Ford dealer even be expected to\u00a0be able to diagnose what is wrong with your Lambourgini? Is the next private member’s bill going to force car dealers to get rid of their oil change and service departments?<\/p>\n

The metaphor for TVs just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny at all – unless Professor Geist has\u00a0figured out a way to use his\u00a0Bell TV\u00a0set-top box for Rogers cable service, or vice versa. Maybe that is another private member’s bill.<\/p>\n

If a phone that was sold by Rogers is unlocked and now is getting used on the TELUS network, which customer service line should the consumer call to find out how to load a Facebook application? When the TELUS representative has to spend extra time trying to learn the menu system for a model that was never sold by them, who should pay for that call?<\/p>\n

How many consumers will be told to take their phones back to the original store for help with the software?<\/p>\n

Should you be able to unlock a phone is a very different question from the government dictating a specific business model that requires all phones to be unlocked. The right to unlock phones is\u00a0part of\u00a0the copyright reform act, Bill C-32<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cellular Freedom Act<\/a> appears to be naively motivated\u00a0and could ultimately inconvenience most consumers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Don’t Lock My Freedom website purports to represent consumer interests, when it is quite possible the net effect of its advocacy will be to raise initial phone prices and long term service costs.\u00a0 An article on Cartt.ca highlights\u00a0these key flaws in the overly simplistic viewpoint that appears to have motivated\u00a0the proposal\u00a0to require wireless service …<\/p>\n

Unintended consumer consequences<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nUnintended consumer consequences • Telecom Trends<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Don't Lock My Freedom website purports to represent consumer interests, when it is quite possible the net effect of its advocacy will be to raise • June 28, 2010\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=3710\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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