Buy whatever phone you want and then use it with whichever service you want - a man can dream. This dream, however, may soon become a reality... in Japan. The government has launched a review of the SIM lock technology that prevents simply swapping SIM cards with a separate carrier. The proposed legislation will not be applicable to the use of international sim cards.
In the United States, you are able to swap SIM cards if the carrier runs on the same type of network, but ATT and Verizon run separate, incompatible networks. Simply put, it is impossible to run an iPhone on Verizon regardless of how much hacking you do on it.
A [fairly] simple work-around for the Japanese carriers would be to remove the inclusion of SIM cards altogether, tying the phone itself to the account much like Sprint in the United States. This allows the carriers to still lock people into a contract, based off of the phone alone. Tread softly, Japan, for you are treading on my dreams.
Man o Man I wish this would happen in the US. I guess the closet thing to it here is the FCC looking into if ETF's should be legal and maybe putting a ban to it. I just know that certain companies would really suffer. For an example almost all customers in New York City and San Francisco would definitely move their iPhones over to Verizon just because AT&T is notorious for having horrible service in the those cities.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who worked in the cell phone industry I can tell you that the U.S. is way behind Japan and Europe. They have had SIM cards for over ten years plus video and live television. The big catch is that there is no discount on the phone. You will wind up paying upwards of $500.00.
ReplyDeleteI hope this happens also, I want to use the iPhone but I dont like AT&T's service. I prefer Verizon and will try to stay with it as long as they keep prices along with competitors. But the iPhone would be a nice phone to get my hands on.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you Joseph, it would be great if we could just switch carriers just simply swapping out the SIM card. I have AT&T and the longer I have the service the more frustrated I become with it.
ReplyDeleteI have tried to sit and explain the cell phone contract to my European friends and they just shake their heads. We got on the subject because they often buy phones while they are here in the states instead of using their phones. They were also wondering why the prepaid phones were so limited in styles and options. And back I went to talking about the contract... Circles.. Big Circles.
ReplyDeleteIt is not a such new thing but atleast its good to have it open like the way Japanese doing it. I have heard that people buy phones and just unlock it to be used with different service although it is illegal. I am not sure
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