Some carriers might be facing a serious problem soon. Starting tomorrow, January 26th, it shall be illegal to unlock your phone by any means other than through the carrier that sold it to you. This means that carrier unlocking (which is easy on most Samsung devices using root) will be illegal, the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) made sure of it.

This could be a lot of trouble for pay as you go carriers, as well as T-Mobile. Carriers like that encourage you to bring your own phone, and you won’t be able to unless it’s from Europe or your own carrier agrees to unlock it. It would be a lot harder for those companies to get customers with their own phones, meaning they lose out (since some don’t offer high end phones and people avoid them), as do the customers having to settle with expensive carriers or low end devices.

What about your rights? You bought the phone, shouldn’t you own it? Well you bought it for a fraction of the price, and are paying the rest off through your contract. In a sense, until your contract is over, you’re still paying it off. However, you can do an engine swap on a car you’re still paying off. Why not unlock a device?

It’s a complicated issue that does not bode well for consumers. What do you guys think? Is it understandable or outrageous? Tell us in the comments.

TmoNews