1. Due to competing technical standards, a phone's hardware either works with Verizon and other carriers or it just works for other carriers.

2. If a phone is bought from a carrier then, because they're fucking pricks, they'll put that phone on a list such that no other carrier will accept it: carrier locked. If a phone is bought from the manufacturer then it'll be carrier unlocked and more expensive.

My wife and I can take our hardware to any carrier that suits us because we've the time to understand the scam and enough money to facilitate the wiser set of choices. The majority of Americans don't have the time or the money.

How come that nothing has ever been made to improve that situation?

The banks own the stock in the corporations that, through intermediate entities, fund our elections and write our legislation. Nothing is being done because our trade unions are weak and neoliberals don't understand why violence is now necessary.

Because American citizens aren't seen as people. They are units in a system, units don't need rights, protection or choice. They need to spend, produce and contribute to the system.

it needs to be a specific model supporting their network carrier, especially the network bands.

That hasn’t been true for years. Back in the 3g and earlier days you’d need to make sure your phone was compatible with the CDMA bands if you used sprint or Verizon. And even then if they didn’t like you you couldn’t use your phone on their network.

But ever since we switched to LTE which is GSM that’s largely not an issue. Everything uses the same technologies, and it’s only a few minor bands here or there that might be missing.

5G kinda shook things up. In particular mmWave 5G which isn’t available in the rest of the world. But even then anyone can buy any carrier unlocked phone and use it with their network.

Also what makes you think that in Europe your phone might not support all the bands the carriers there use? My international market iPhone doesn’t support all the bands used in Costa Rica. Phones carry by region all the time. The only difference is in the USA they can be locked to one carrier unless you convince them to unlock it.

Americans have uniquely accepted a compromising position of a "lower" price phone that only works with one network and locks them in for a fairly long duration.

The American population has accepted quite a few of these uniquely compromising situations under the guise of "the free market"

All Verizon devices are bootloader-locked and they will not unlock them. If you ever want to run a custom ROM, do not buy Verizon devices.

There are MVNOs using Verizon's network that have bootloader-unlockable devices. 🤷‍♂️

people cannot just use any phone they want, it needs to be a specific model supporting their network carrier, especially the network bands.

No, you can get phones that will work with any carrier's frequencies. There are some differences in phones and carrier frequency support, but there's loads of overlap -- a phone will be able to talk to another carrier's network. They have to for roaming to work.

What you may be thinking of is phones that are "locked" to a phone provider's network, which is very common when getting a phone. Basically, you get a phone plan and receive a phone from the carrier at a price that loses the carrier money. The carrier then goes and makes up the difference with higher monthly rates on your plan than would have normally been the case -- basically, attaches a small loan to the plan. It lets phone companies have a low up-front price. It's questionable as to whether this is a good financial idea for consumers, but it's not a technical limitation. As I recall, there's some regulation that requires carriers to unlock carrier-locked phones upon request after a period of time.

kagis

Yeah.

https://www.fcc.gov/general/cell-phone-unlocking

Postpaid Unlocking Policy. Carriers, upon request, will unlock mobile wireless devices or provide the necessary information to unlock their devices, for customers and former customers in good standing and individual owners of eligible devices after the fulfillment of the applicable postpaid service contract, device financing plan or payment of an applicable early termination fee.

Doesn't affect me, because I've only ever purchased unlocked cell phones.