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Comment by jkot | Hacker News Reader

All providers in Europe will unlock your phone if you spend enough credit or for small fee.

Also US devices have locked some features (voice calls on tablets).

In Poland all phones have to be sold without a simlock. Doesn't matter if you are on contract or not. The world still hasn't collapsed, people on contracts continue to pay for them, nothing has changed.

Same thing in Belgium. Simlocked phones are illegal, even subsidized phones are unlocked. Of course, the phone subsidy is much lower than in countries that allow simlocking.

Also true in Singapore.

Some contracts can be nastier (e.g. no early termination, just pay the rest), but that may just be an unrelated local difference (I've seen the same thing with residential ISP contracts, where there isn't a SIM-locking equivalent).

How it works in Canada: whether you pay off the phone entirely or not, pay 3 months in a row to the carrier you bought the locked phone from and then you can pay an additional $50+tax to have it unlocked. While it's nice the CRTC (our FCC basically) required this, it's terrible in that most carriers were either doing free/cheap unlocks after 3 months or $50 anytime after your device was paid for. Feels like we ended up with a mandated "worse" option to me.

Yeah there was nothing more irritating than having to pay Rogers $50 after having an iPhone for three years.

TELUS Mobility charges $35 so it's competitive. What isn't competitive, are the plans up here in Canada.

We now pay more for less data than we did 3 years ago.

> We now pay more for less data than we did 3 years ago.

This is this to show all Canadians how much better out plans our than Verizon! Remember, vote "No" on Verizon come election day! /s

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