Breaking a contract is far less serious than defaulting on a loan. And if the cell providers' argument is "we need radio locks because fraud," remember they're full of crap.

It's not every consumer's fault that Verizon made hundreds of thousands of bad decisions about to whom they decided to extend credit last year. It's theirs.

This change in policy came less than a week after Verizon suffered a high-visibility outage[1] that left scores of people unable to use their phones. Before this policy change, customers could at least pick up an eSIM on another network for emergencies. Not anymore. Thanks, FCC.

[1]: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/15782764/verizon-down-sos-mode-...

This change makes that path unattractive to me, which is probably better for Verizon. I can see how 60 days ends up being too short to deal with fradulent purchases because charge backs are available for a long time. Changing the period to one year feels like way too long to validate purchases, and requiring active service for the whole year doesn't feel like validating a purchase either.

But I'm also on prepaid (on a different network). If you're on most postpaid plans, the cost of a phone subsidy is built into the plan, so if you don't take the subsidized phone, you're paying for something you're not getting.