Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Still, I'm sure you can see why the ability to switch to any carrier but Verizon would appeal to someone who lived Stateside.
If smartphones offered that option, I'd be able to choose the best carrier pricing at any given time --
...
I'd be glad to have a multicarrier-enhanced SIM that allowed me to choose the least expensive and most regionally dense service depending on where I was and what the market dictated.
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You already
can choose freely in the US. Apart from still having CDMA carriers like Sprint and Verizon, the problem is that GSM carriers in the US lock phones even if they are bought on contract, while in Germany, only phones sold with prepaid SIMs have a SIM lock. I assume the same holds true for the rest of Europe.
Simple solution: don't buy your cell or tablet from a carrier or on a plan. Pay the manufacturer up front full price, and have the freedom to switch carriers. Or pay whatever fee they charge you to unlock your device. All new GSM devices are already multiple-band.
The iPad has never been SIM locked, and I can swap SIM cards as I please. When I travel internationally, I just pop in a different SIM card, and I've been able to do that since the iPad 1. SIM cards can range between 0 and maybe $15, depending on the carrier, so it's not a huge expense either way.