anyone else thinking Varney is peeved cause she wanted to get an iphone but not cut her t-mobile account. then again, if it gets someone to consider what they have done in a few places overseas and make device locking illegal, who cares what the inspiration was.

i’m sure the folks at Apple would love to be able to just sell the phone full price. no activation nonsense. no folks arguing with them about deposits, subsidies etc.

@Lucas, @morgan The iPhone may have prompted this but image a scenario where you could get your light bulbs only from your power company. They didn’t offer the brightness you wanted? Tough. Didn’t have the color you wanted? Oh well. This was the telecom industry of the 50s. Buy your phones from us or don’t get service. It kept phone prices high and features limited.

You can argue that now we have phones with more and more features, getting cheaper and cheaper. The only problem is that the true cost of the hardware is hidden behind the cost of the service. Hardware and software companies must form alliances to survive. Hardware prices fall to the point where there is almost no differentiation while service prices climb to make up for this discrepancy.

I’m not for the government stepping into any industry to regulate it, but this is one case where it is needed. Even printer manufactures can’t legally lock their printers to their ink cartridges. Why should mobile service be any different?

“Largely moribund and hamstrung by internal politics and inefficiency during the Bush administration, DOJ under President Barack Obama has seen renewed relevance”.

I don’t really think your opinions on the previous and current presidents should be included in this article.

> Those are not my opinions; they are facts.
for those ignorant of the difference