from Hacker News

Verizon tries to get out of merger condition requiring it to unlock phones

by coloneltcb on 5/21/25, 9:00 PM with 7 comments

• by aurizon on 5/21/25, 9:40 PM

  Reminds me of the parable of the scorpion asking the friendly tortoise to help him cross a river = this is their nature...

• by johnklos on 5/22/25, 1:21 AM

  Does it surprise anyone that Verizon's Department of Evil would lie, cheat, bribe, steal, or otherwise do whatever it can to not be held to account for its agreements?

  I'm not surprised, just as I won't be surprised if Verizon gets their way after throwing a few million dollars in the direction of Trump's "Library" or whatever.

• by notjulianjaynes on 5/22/25, 12:57 AM

  This applies to carrier locking, not their practice of preventing bootloader unlocking on devices sold by Verizon, correct?

• by commiepatrol on 5/22/25, 7:37 PM

  Verizon used to be phenomenal, about 2-3 years ago I noticed a decline. About a year ago it simply stopped working at my house. I filed a ticket and nothing happened in a week (I thought maybe their nearby tower died or something). Switched to AT&T and it's been great

• by tbihl on 5/22/25, 12:26 AM

  I don't normally think of prepaid carriers like Tracfone doing a lot of subsidized phones, but apparently that's the heart of the issue. I'm surprised Verizon doesn't just go with the Biden plan, figuring that the other players will also not be able to subsidize devices for prepaid lines, at that point.

  OTOH, I do remember once trying to buy a subsidized iphone at Walmart, and it was pretty clear that someone was buying all of them, everywhere, before actual users could get them.