For years, Verizon phones carried a premium in places most customers would never see. Not in retail stores or resale markets, but on dark-web forums where unlocked handsets move fast and fetch high prices. That detail sits at the centre of why US regulators have finally stepped in.
This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) closed a long-standing rule that forced Verizon to unlock its phones just 60 days after activation. The policy, nearly 20 years old and unique to Verizon, was meant to protect consumers. Instead, regulators now say it became a roadmap for fraud.
The problem was timing. 60 days turned out to be too short for carriers to reliably detect device fraud. Stolen phones could be activated, unlocked, and resold before warning signs appeared. According to the FCC, criminal networks exploited that window at scale, moving Verizon devices through international trafficking routes and reselling them at premium prices, particularly in markets like Russia, China, and Cuba.
Verizon says the impact was not abstract. In 2023 alone, the company estimates it lost more than 784,000 devices across prepaid and postpaid plans, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. The issue worsened after Verizon acquired TracFone in 2021 and applied the same 60-day unlocking rule to prepaid phones. Fraud spiked by roughly 55 percent after TracFone shifted from its earlier one-year lock period.
The FCC’s view is blunt. Chair Brendan Carr said both sophisticated criminal networks and everyday lawbreakers exploited the rule, linking handset trafficking to broader criminal activity, including drug running and human smuggling. From the agency’s perspective, Verizon’s phones became disproportionately attractive targets simply because they unlocked faster than everyone else’s.
That comparison matters. Other major US carriers already follow industry norms, unlocking phones once they are paid off or after a longer, defined period. Verizon was the outlier, bound by a legacy rule that no longer reflected how global device fraud operates.
The solution is straightforward. Verizon will now align with the CTIA Consumer Code for Wireless Service, a voluntary industry standard that governs unlocking timelines, customer notice, and specific exceptions, such as for deployed military personnel. The FCC says this creates a more uniform approach across the industry and removes the incentive to single out one carrier’s devices.
For everyday users, the change is unlikely to be disruptive. Customers will still be able to unlock their phones once eligibility requirements are met. What should change is how often stolen devices vanish into grey and black markets before carriers can intervene.
Looking ahead, the decision reflects a broader shift in how regulators think about telecom security. Phone fraud is no longer viewed as isolated theft. It sits inside global, organised networks that move hardware, data, and money across borders. Policies written for a simpler era are now being tested against that reality.
By closing this loophole, the FCC is betting that fewer unlocked phones will mean fewer incentives for large-scale device theft. Whether that slows criminal networks remains to be seen. What is clear is that the cost of doing nothing had grown too high to ignore.
Oluwaseun Bamisile
