The UK telecoms regulator has announced that UK service providers will be banned from locking phones to their service. They've taken their own sweet time to realise that even when unlocking procedures officially exist it is still a restrictive practice, but they've got there eventually.
The bad news is that they've given the service providers a whole year to make a trivial adjustment. And one of the biggest (Vodafone) has already said that they will comply once it's legally required (which implies that they will keep locking handsets until the last minute).
I haven't bought a locked handset this century, but I'll be glad to see the back of this BS anyway. Now if they'll just stop carriers messing with the firmware, delaying updates and adding bloat to the ROM...
The bad news is that they've given the service providers a whole year to make a trivial adjustment. And one of the biggest (Vodafone) has already said that they will comply once it's legally required (which implies that they will keep locking handsets until the last minute).
I haven't bought a locked handset this century, but I'll be glad to see the back of this BS anyway. Now if they'll just stop carriers messing with the firmware, delaying updates and adding bloat to the ROM...