A Complaint has been filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court against AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile and Cingular Wireless alleging unfair business practices under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code Sections 17200 and 17500. Specifically, the complaint alleges that cell phones sold by these companies were designed to allow users to swap a chip inside their phone that identifies them as a customer. Consumers who wished to take advantage of the Federal Communications Commission's recent "number portability" rule by going to another new company and keeping the same phone number would also be able to keep their phones under this built-in technology. However, the complaint alleges that the three companies have inserted software inside the phones they sell to prevent such interchangeability. Thus, a dissatisfied customer of one company must be willing to buy a new phone and throw away an otherwise perfectly good phone in order to change carriers. The result, the consumer advocates said, is that many consumers are forced to stay with a cell company whose service they find unsatisfactory, competition is frustrated, and usable phones clog our landfills.
"If you can use the same phone number with other carriers, you should be able to use the same phone, " said Jordan Lurie of Weiss & Lurie. The practice by companies that all use the same Global System Mobile (GSM) network is particularly egregious, Lurie noted. "Pop out the SIM-chip, pop in a new SIM-chip. That's how easy it should be to use your GSM phone with another carrier. Handset locking is just another unfair way to lock customers into their networks."
The complaint seeks an injunction against the further locking of phones sold by defendants in the future, forcing defendants to provide unlocking codes for phones already sold and to inform the public of the changes, and disgorgement of profits from this practice.