LittleRedRose

Maybe not technical monopolies but there are plenty of monopolies setup through cross company agreements where the major telecom companies agree on where they will provide service. Example I live in the Hudson valley and on the West Bank of the Hudson we have purely spectrum and the east side is fios/Comcast. Though not a technical monopoly I only have one option for internet.

Theoretically you could’ve bought a phone from Verizon to protect from buying a stolen phone and then switched to another service by buying the phone without a plan or with a monthly no contract plan. Now it’s harder to do that. Overall for long term users there’s not much effect, but it does affect a small group of specific users.

Verizon recently announced they will begin to lock new phones to there network. Up to this point Verizon had been good at selling phones already unlocked from their network and only locking phone-in-the-box prepaid phones, to offset the subsidy of said phone. With this new change in policy it will be interesting to see if it will extend to deployed military personnel or will Verizon keep their policy of unlocking deployed military personal on request regardless of the length of ownership. News story from The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/17003690/verizon-phones-locked-network-date-spring-change-policy Verizon policy quotes from Verizon website: http://www.verizon.com/about/consumer-safety/device-unlocking-policy