Locked Phones in Finland?
It sounds like Finland is going to taste of what is common place here in the US: locked mobile phones. The reason there is fairly simple: they want to give people expensive 3G phones with a contract to get them hooked on the service. Guaranteed revenue.
I personally do not like the idea of locked phones. I think it is a ridiculous waste of resources to have to buy a new phone every time you switch carriers. In Finland where every carrier uses GSM, an unlocked phone can be used on any carrier. Here in the US, you’re stuck with Cingular or T-Mobile in the GSM world. The CDMA phones are not necessarily compatible with all networks, not to mention SIM-less. Even if you could get, for instance, Verizon to permit a phone you purchased from Sprint, it’s not going to work very well.
It will be interesting to see what the uptake of 3G is in Finland, not to mention what the uptake is on locked phones. I can’t imagine the Finns being all that happy with locked handsets. They know better, most of us in the US don’t.
