OT: Nokia expects open source developers to accept things like DRM, commercial IP rights, and SIM locks.

Gabriel Ambuehl gabriel_ambuehl at buz.ch
Sun Jun 15 10:09:03 CEST 2008


On Saturday 14 June 2008 10:50:12 Federico Lorenzi wrote:
> This has been beaten to death in previous threats. You are not getting
> the phone for free, you are merely paying for it in your contract.

With most carriers I know, you actually do get it for free in a sense because 
you would pay as much for the contract without the phone (I generally take 
whatever phone they offer and sell it). So in a way, the phone is free to me 
unless I would have otherwise gone for another contract, of course.


It is definitely true for subsidized SIM locked PrePay phones where you would 
pay the same rates if you brought your own phone. The operator would be 
pretty dumb to subsidize a phone, not get any contract income and let you use 
it on whatever network you please. 


> South Africa has a nice system here. Sure you can get a phone on
> contract, for free, but that phone is not restricted in anyway. 
> If you want to use it on a competitors network, fine, as long as you keep
> paying your contract or pay cancellation fees, they don't care.


Same in most European countries. The locked phone with contract is mostly an 
US phenomenon. 

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