After how many years of pocketing the extra money? I feel like T-Mobile is truly disrupting the industry, and I'm voting with my wallet to support them. I can't wait until the other carriers actually start competing with T-Mobile, instead of just playing catch up. I hope that's when the industry actually becomes consumer-friendly, instead of hostile.

So that's half the problem - the other half is the locked handsets. With TMobile, you pay for unlocked you get a fully unlocked handset. If you are on the TMO installment plan, your phone is locked until you pay up, at which point they unlock it - no 2 years required.

After 40 days they are willing to unlock it too, you don't have to pay it off entirely...

Last I heard (6 months ago), AT&T makes you wait till your contract is up before unlocking, and on the other side Verizon won't let you bring your unlocked phone to their service - forcing you to buy one from them.

AT&T hasn't unlocked any of my iPhone's... and still won't even after my contract with them was ended in good standing.

I was able to use their unlock portal to request and receive unlocks for all of my iPhones (3G, 4, 4S) after my contract was up.

https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/