Ofcom proposes to ban sale of network locked phones

[HEXUS]

And it is planning to make home broadband switching even easier.

Read more.

[Top_gun]

Three sold their handsets unlocked for several years now.

[DanceswithUnix]

This is all very nice, but the nature of VoLTE means you have to buy a phone from the company you will be using it with or that feature won't work.

This was a part of why I bought my son's last phone as part of a Three contract. He can happily use the phone on another carrier, but voice will fall back to 3G. That's fine if you have a good signal strength, but voice over 4G can help in some areas.

[Zak33]

This is all very nice, but the nature of VoLTE means you have to buy a phone from the company you will be using it with or that feature won't work.

This was a part of why I bought my son's last phone as part of a Three contract. He can happily use the phone on another carrier, but voice will fall back to 3G. That's fine if you have a good signal strength, but voice over 4G can help in some areas.

I'd rather voice could still run over 2g as well... its voice after all...that's what it was invented for all those years back and 2g could do with staying for a while. There are many areas where 3g and 4g don't exist at all and only 2g works. Phones are often rubbish at swapping from VoLTE to 2g while travelling and a long phone call involves constant disconnects.
Some networks are considering dropping 3g, (which makes sense to a certain extent) but 2g is still essential for many rural areas.

[big_hairy_rob]

Actually this is a good idea. Phones are no longer discounted with contracts, often being sold at a premium instead so locking the phone the network is simply causing a barrier for a customer

[globalwarning]

Meanwhile in the USA, I'm pretty sure the FCC is having back room talks with telcos to find ways to declare that it's in consumer's best interests to have phones locked down and allow a fee from the telcos for unlocked phones on their networks...

[leexgx]

VoLTE support in phones issue (apart from iPhone) is network operators don't want to let NVMO networks use 4g voice and big 4 not using android 8 or higher built in feature that can pull the 4g ims configuration from the sim card or even the network it self but they refuse to use it

most phones have ee ims built in and supports 4g voice on all 4g bands, vodafone is hit or miss if it works (my phone says ims is registered but soon as I make a call it drops to 3g) and 3 only works in 4g800 still (if its on fast 4g it will drop to 3g to make the call work) , unsure about O2 as I have only ever used giffgaff on O2 so no 4g voice there

[jimborae]

I'd rather voice could still run over 2g as well... its voice after all...that's what it was invented for all those years back and 2g could do with staying for a while. There are many areas where 3g and 4g don't exist at all and only 2g works. Phones are often rubbish at swapping from VoLTE to 2g while travelling and a long phone call involves constant disconnects.
Some networks are considering dropping 3g, (which makes sense to a certain extent) but 2g is still essential for many rural areas.

Actually in this country & a lot of Europe I believe it was 2G that was wanting to be re-purposed before 3G. Unfortunately for the likes of Vodafone, who still have millions of M2M devices still operating on 2G, this makes it somewhat kind of tricky. So in the end 3G is actually likely to get shutdown before 2G even though 2G would be better for 4G re-allocation.