President Barack Obama has signed the long-disputed mobile phone unlocking bill making the practice legal in the United States till 2015.
Wireless subscribers are given the freedom to change their carriers anytime by simply unlocking their phones without attracting any legal trouble. President Barack Obama signed the bill that allows mobile phone users to unlock their phones, restoring the consumers' right to update software and switch carriers. But the law will be reviewed in 2015.
The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act H.R. 1123 was passed in the US House of Representative in February with majority votes favoring the decision. The Senate signed the bill ast month and was unanimously approved by the House of Representatives last week. Obama was expected to sign the bill after he revealed his interest last Friday, Politico reported.
The mobile phones sold by the carriers in the US are integrated with software that locks the devices' capabilities to only one carrier's network. Updating the software to unlock the devices was outlawed by the Library of Congress in January 2012, citing it as a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), CNET reports. The Library of Congress decided not to renew the DMCA exception for cell phone unlocking last year, which was approved in 2006 and 2010. But the new law signed by Obama revokes the 2012 decision by the Library of Congress.
The freedom to unlock cell phones is beneficial for international travelers who can avoid roaming charges by going on a local network. The law was supported by many politicians and consumer groups. It also attracted more than 114,000 signatures when a petition was posted to the White House's We the People site, the Mac Observer reports.
Jot Carpenter, vice president of government affairs at CTIA, commended the new law. "Even though the vast majority of Americans enjoy upgrading to new devices once their contract terms are fulfilled, we recognize that some consumers may want to unlock their devices to move to another carrier," CNET quoted Carpenter as saying in a statement. "Like the voluntary commitment CTIA's carriers entered into last December, this bill enables that process. Users should keep in mind unlocked does not necessarily mean interoperable, as carrier platforms and spectrum holdings vary."
