Groups Urge FCC to Drop Verizon Handset Unlocking Requirement
Numerous groups filed in support of Verizon's request that the FCC delete the unlocking commitment it stipulated as a condition of approving the company’s purchase of Tracfone (see 2505200051). Among those on the filing were the American Consumer Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Association of Senior Citizens, the 60 Plus Association, the Institute for Technology and Network Economics and Less Government.
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“Clearing the regulatory underbrush can best be accomplished by strategic policy making that identifies and eliminates regulations that have outlived their usefulness or, in some cases, should never have been adopted at all,” said the filing last week in docket 06-150.
The rule “has created a huge law-and-order problem,” the groups added. “Sophisticated international organized crime rings have been able to avoid protections against the trafficking of lost, stolen, or fraudulently obtained devices. They can rake in enormous profits by illicitly acquiring heavily subsidized U.S. phones and reselling them abroad.