Verizon Continues To Make Phone Unlocking Annoying (With The Trump FCC’s Help)

Earlier this year we noted how the Trump FCC, at the direct request of wireless phone giants, destroyed popular phone unlocking rules making it easier and cheaper to switch wireless carriers. The rules, applied via spectrum acquisition and merger conditions after years of activism, required that Verizon unlock your phone within 60 days after purchase so you could easily switch to competitors.

Verizon, as we’ve long established, hates competition, and early last year immediately got to work lobbying the Trump administration to destroy the rules (falsely) claiming, without evidence, that the modest phone unlocking requirements were a boon to criminals and scammers.

The pay-to-play Trump administration quickly agreed, killed the rules, and shortly thereafter Verizon started telling wireless customers on its many prepaid phone brands (including Tracfone) they had to wait a year before switching phones after purchasing one from Verizon:

“While a locked phone is tied to the network of one carrier, an unlocked phone can be switched to another carrier if the device is compatible with the other carrier’s network. But the new TracFone unlocking policy is stringent, requiring customers to pay for a full year of service before they can get a phone unlocked.”

Recently, Verizon implemented a whole bunch of additional restrictions made possible by the Trump administration. More specifically, they imposed a new 35-day waiting period when a customer pays off their device installment plan online or in the Verizon app and wants to take their device to another carrier:

“Payments made over the phone also trigger a 35-day waiting period, as do payments made at Verizon Authorized Retailers. Getting an immediate unlock apparently requires paying off the device plan at a Verizon corporate store.”

So first, they implemented the most draconian restrictions on its prepaid customers, who tend to be lower income and the most impacted from high prices. Now they’re starting to push restrictions onto their more lucrative postpaid (month to month) customers.

Verizon insists (falsely) that these restrictions are necessary to “prevent fraud,” but the real goal is to increase friction when it comes to switching to a competitor. They don’t want the press to outright acknowledge this is anti-competitive in coverage, so they’re engaging in the slow-boiling frog approach that just steadily makes porting your phone out steadily more difficult and annoying.

These unlocking conditions were broadly popular, served the public interest, and took decades of activism and reform advocacy to pass. They ensured that it was easier for consumers to switch between our ever-consolidating, anti-competitive wireless phone giants (consolidation directly made possible by the Trump administration’s past rubber stamping of shitty telecom mergers).

Verizon lobbied the FCC by repeatedly lying, without evidence, that these conditions resulted in a wave of black market phone thefts. FCC boss Brendan Carr, ever the industry lackey, parroted the lies in his subsequent industry-friendly rulings. You know, to make America great again via “populism” or whatever.

Verizon (and Carr) know that there’s a lot going on and the mundanity of a subject like phone unlocking won’t get much attention in the press. Given that the Trump administration has largely lobotomized regulatory independence (at Verizon’s request), there’s very little chance Verizon will see any future accountability, but it’s positively adorable that they’re proceeding cautiously just in case.