FCC wants all phones unlocked in sixty days, AT&T and T-Mobile aren't so keen

The point is to lock the user into a contract with the carrier. By binding the phone to there service they make it unlikely that a user will switch providers as that would need a new phone while still paying off the old phone.

That's why they'll offer these phones at low or no interest plans, so they can pull in the $50/month subscription for the years that the phone is being paid off.

I support this move as hopefully it will kill off the practice of carrier specific OSes.

The last carrier phone I bought was a Samsung Galaxy 4 from T-Mobile. I got a total of 0 os updates out of it because T-Mobile never released a new version of the OS (even though Samsung did). They just abandoned the phone.

At this point the most important quality of a phone to me is active security updates, so I'll never buy one where a carrier can get in the way of protecting myself from zero day exploits.

Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article

This is pure speculation, but is it possible that Android never would have been successful (or as successful) if they did not bow to the carriers? By taking carrier-friendly positions they built a symbiotic relationship that resulted in the carriers being happy to promote their phones.

I worked in the prepaid phone industry for 4 years so I have some insight on this. This is bad. The whole purpose of phones being locked for 6(now 12 at Mpcs) mo. is so that we are able to offer very decent phones to poor people who would otherwise not be able to afford the up front cost. Were talking about $200-500 phones being given away for completely FREE to new customers sold at a LOSS and we only HOPE to recover that money if they keep their service more than 6 months, for the $500 off iphones closer to 12. Every new prepaid customer who takes advantage of this-we are taking a massive gamble on wether or not this person will legitimately intend to pay their monthly bill, or if theyre just taking advantage of the initial subsidy and then cancelling service and selling the phones overseas or for parts. The industry consides this fraud. Frontline prepaid retailers already have to do some basic KYC on customers like checking IDs(which isnt a hard requirement) to make sure customers arent abusing the promos, because all it takes is a handful of abusers to cause serious economic harm to a particular stores which aleady operate on thin profit margins. If this change goes through expect prepaid/anonymous phones to go away(KYC and ID checking will kick into overdrive), people in poverty wont be able to get iPhones for $100 upfront anymore, expect hundreds more prepaid phone franchise stores to go out of business and thousands of people to lose their jobs, and for what? What is the benfit of this? So retail arbitragers can buy phones to export overseas at the expense of the American lower class even faster in 2 months rather than 6-12?