Many mobile phones, particularly in the United States, are locked to prevent you from using them on other carriers. Those locks are software based, and like most anything, there’s a hack to unlock your cell so you can use it on any mobile service provider; simply by switching out SIM cards. Recently however, on January 26th 2013, legal protection of unlocking phones expired in America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 1201 [PDF].
Why Would I Want To Unlock My Phone?
Well, for starters, if you’re not living in the U.S. (or Israel or Singapore, the only other two countries in the world with legal restrictions against unlocking) you don’t have anything to worry about, legally. Everywhere else in the world, phones are either sold unlocked, or can legally be unlocked by mobile phone shops or hackers feeling feisty on the weekends. So if your phone does happen to be locked (e.g. you purchased it from AT&T and now want to use Orange during your trip to England) unlocking it lets you do just that.
Gray Hat Travel Tech 101: Everything You Need To Know About Unlocking Your Mobile Phone – Laws don’t apply to you or you don’t care? This guide is for you.
An unlocked phone allows you to avoid expensive international calling and messaging fees when you travel internationally. And not only that, if you want to switch from a carrier within your own country to another, unlocking gives you that option as well.
It’s easy to confuse “unlocking” with jailbreaking or rooting. Jailbreaking and rooting your mobile phone essentially opens it up to 3rd party apps – effectively getting you around the Apple App Store and Android Market. (“Rooting” is the term used for Android devices and “jailbreaking” refers to iPhones; but for the rest of this article I’ll stick with the term jailbreaking for brevity.) Typically a jailbreak of a mobile device will unlock it as well.
However, that same DMCA ruling has made the laws around unlocking mobiles a little less clear.
Your Unlocked Phone Might Be Breaking The Law
Unlocking your phone isn’t illegal according to the DMCA if you’ve already paid off the phone and the original contract you purchased it with (for subsidized pricing). Once you’ve paid off your phone and the original contract expires, you’re legally allowed to unlock it all you want. Also, if you didn’t bother with a contract in the first place and bought your phone for full price, unlock away without a hint of guilt.
Everyone one else to whom the DMCA applies, unlocking your phone or having an unlocked phone is illegal and carries penalties up to $2,500 in a civil suit of $500,000 or 5 years in prison for criminal cases. (WTF America?) Yet it’s still very unlikely anyone is going to come after you with a lawsuit because you’ve got an unlocked phone…especially if you’re traveling around the world with it.