Days after the White House endorsed a White House petition to legalize cell phone unlocking, a number of senators have taken up the issue to introduce a new bill.
To legalize cellphone unlocking in US, three senators – Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pushed the Wireless Consumer Choice Act on Thursday. The bill would instruct the FCC to order network carriers to allow their customers to unlock their phones after completing their contractual agreement.
Klobuchar said in a statement that consumers has a right to change his or her wireless service provider after they have legally paid the cell phone price in full by abiding to the contractual agreement.
Lee added that consumers “shouldn’t have to fear criminal charges if they want to unlock their cell phones and switch carriers.”
Blumenthal said the bill “is common sense, crucial for protecting consumer choice, and important for ensuring healthy competition in the market.”
Last month, Sina Khanifar, co-founder of OpenSignal, filed a petition on whitehouse.gov against the ban imposed by the Librarian of Congress. With a little over two days to spare, the petition reached the 100,000 signature goal, which means the White House must respond. Both FCC and White House then advocated cell phone unlocking in response to an online petition that gathered more than 114,000 signatures.
Even AT&T released a statement on its Public Policy Blog saying that cell phone unlocking doesn’t need government intervention, the company already unlocks devices. It appeared that AT&T already implemented the policies what the recent unlock petition seeks.
You’ll soon be able to unlock your carrier-locked mobile phone legally. Excited?
Source: The Hill
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