I found THIS article interesting.
T-Mobile states, "T-Mobile is passionate about winning customers for life, and explained how its handset unlocking policies greatly benefit our customers.” So they want to be so excellent that they win customers for life, and yet they oppose a rule that would require phones to be unlocked after 60 days.
I imagine that it galls the suits to no end that they cannot lock phones permanently.
The “benefit” to customers is to use the lure of “free” to get them into an over-priced plan that hides the fact that they are paying for the phone in installments. They then dangle another “free” phone when the first is paid off. Rinse and repeat. This also produces sticker shock when customers look for phones from non-carrier sources and see what they actually cost. Most people don’t read contracts before signing, so they don’t have a clue about much of this stuff. I’ve tried to explain to many people that judicious non-carrier phone purchase and carrier plan selection can save a lot of money in the long run. This doesn’t work with people for whom long-run planning means “what do we do for dinner tonight?”
I deal with the locking problem by not buying phones from carriers. I can then shop for the best plan without charges for the phone being hidden in the plan cost and also not have to worry about the charges for the phone continuing after the phone has been paid off.
I don’t follow the new-phone-each-year path. I hold on to a phone until either it gets “broken” by the underlying radio protocols being turned off (1 phone), or it has a hardware failure (2 phones), or it gets stolen (1 phone). One exception was when I got in on the Republic Wireless beta test. That was my first smart phone. I still have a phone I bought from Republic Wireless (outright, no installments) during the early stages of the Dishsaster, which is another exception. It is not locked. I keep it as an emergency spare and for programming my esim.me card.
When I say hardware failure, I mean it. Battery failure gets the battery replaced. (2 phones, one of them twice before hardware failed, also I am not looking forward to dealing with 14 tiny screws to replace my current battery, but it is still cheaper than a new phone.)
The fraud issue is self-inflicted. If carriers would actually enforce the stolen-phone list, and list phones where payments have defaulted as stolen, the problem would largely dry up. Mind you, enforcement of the stolen phone list would have to include playing hardball with international carriers. “Enforce the list or don’t connect to the US.”