D.C. Memo: Verizon Wants FCC to Lift Mobile Phone Unlocking Mandate
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Unlocking: Verizon on Monday asked the FCC to waive a regulation that requires it to unlock mobile phones within 60 days. The FCC imposed the mandate first when Verizon acquired 700 MHz spectrum in 2007 and again when the communications giant acquired Tracfone in 2021. “The Unlocking Rule applies only to particular providers – mainly Verizon – and distorts the marketplace in a critical U.S. industry. The rule has resulted in unintended consequences that harm consumers, competition, and Verizon, while propping up international criminal organizations that profit from fraud, including device trafficking of subsidized devices from the U.S.,” Verizon said in a petition for waiver with the agency. Verizon said because of unlocking requirements, it lost 784,703 devices to fraud in 2023, “costing it hundreds of millions of dollars annually.” The FCC extended the unlocking requirement – which does not apply to AT&T – to T-Mobile when the Un-carrier bought Mint/Ultra last year. Last year, then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel – with initial support from Republican FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington – opened a rulemaking proposing to require all mobile service providers to unlock mobile phones 60 days after a device is activated. Verizon supported Rosenworcel insofar as the FCC planned to require at least a 60-day locking period for postpaid customers and 180 days for prepaid customers. AT&T and T-Mobile said the FCC lacked the legal authority to adopt unlocking rules. Rosenworcel proposal is still active as WTB: 24-186 and was not among the 2,000 dockets that Carr said on May 2 he wanted terminate as dormant. “The Unlocking Rule is an outdated regulation that has become both unnecessary and counterproductive. It is regulation for regulation’s sake,” Verizon said in its wavier petition. (More after paywall.)
