BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And now for a few of your letters. We received a strong response to a pair of interviews we did pondering the question, are the big wireless carriers crippling features we could have on our cell phones? For instance, why can't we change carriers without changing phones?

Elian Poll wrote in with this observation. Quote, "As an American living in Denmark, I'm amazed that Americans aren't more vocal about the poor functionality of their mobile phones. The only reason I can think of is that most Americans are totally unaware of the functionality that is available to the rest of the world.

During my visits to the States over the last few years, I've enjoyed going to phone stores and marveling at the primitive phones sold in the U.S. It's like visiting a mobile phone museum."
BOB GARFIELD:
But Nathan Harms wrote in from Edmonton, Canada to say that we were, quote, "a bit unfair to Apple regarding the new iPhone. Your show made it sound as though Apple was somehow complicit in the failure of carriers to provide desired services. Actually, from what I heard, the iPhone provides a number of features unavailable in other phones, and these features were negotiated by Apple.

From what I heard, part of the deal with Cingular was that Apple would commit itself to Cingular only in return for the concessions Cingular was making."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Finally this from Tina Huang of Somerville, Massachusetts. She writes, quote, "As a result of your story on the locking of mobile phones to carriers, I sent letters to my congressman, the Better Business Bureau and the FCC. The FCC sent me an email that states, quote, 'The Library of Congress ruled that mobile phone subscribers can remove software locks that prevent them from using handsets when they switch carriers.'"

When we called Tina on her cell phone, she said she wanted to switch her service to a carrier called Working Assets, because it supports liberal causes.
TINA HUANG:
You know, I'd really wanted to switch to them, but they don't carry a phone which I really love, which is the Sprint Handspring Treo. And I don't want to have to throw away my phone to buy a new one because it will cost me hundreds of dollars, and it's detrimental to the environment to throw a phone away.

So I sent the FCC, Better Business Bureau and my congressman my story about how frustrated I was, and that's when the FCC emailed me this reply and said, well, actually, a ruling was made that went into effect in November. So I was very surprised to hear that.

And I emailed them back when they sent that to me, and I said, well, this is worthy of a press release. Why haven't I heard about it on the media? [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:
Now you have. The decision forcing wireless carriers to let you unlock your phone stays in effect until November 2009. We'll link to it from our site at onthemedia.org, and you can email us at onthemedia@wnyc.org.