Last week a voluntary agreement made between the CTIA Wireless Association and the FCC went into effect, officially marking the point where consumers can insist on having smartphones and tablets they fully paid for unlocked from any of the four major carriers.

But while unlocking your phone has been legal for months by now and the wireless carriers have committed to a standard for unlocking customer devices, most of them currently deserve a poor-to-failing grade.

That's at least according to a recent report from consumer advocate and the man behind the White House petition to make unlocking phones legal, Sina Khanifar (via Ars Technica), who measured reality against what the CTIA promised to do on phone unlocking in its Consumer Code in a blog post released this week.

In short, what Khanifar found wasn't promising.

Only Verizon Passed 100%

He tested six metrics based on the Consumer Code, and found that only Verizon met all of them. AT&T may have missed one, T-Mobile definitely failed on at least two, and Sprint, unsurprisingly (since we've mentioned this before), was still the worst.

The six metrics to make the grade are the following:

  • Disclosure: Clear, concise, easily-available policies on unlocking devices
  • Postpaid Policy: Carriers should unlock phones of current or former customers in good standing once contracts are fulfilled, financing plans have been completed, and/or early termination fees are paid in full.
  • Prepaid Policy: Carriers must unlock prepaid phones exactly one year after activation, as long as customers are in reasonably good standing.
  • Notification: Carriers should notify customers when devices are eligible for unlocking, or automatically unlock them. Prepaid customers must be notified about unlocking availability via web or at the point of sale.
  • Response time: Carriers should unlock eligible customers' devices within two days of a request, or at least reply or take some action in that time-frame.
  • Deployed personnel: Carriers should unlock devices for military customers in good standing who provide proof of deployment.

And here's how the big four wireless companies stack up against their promises:

(Image : Sina Khanifar)

Verizon passed all of the criteria, though as Khanifar later updated, it's in part because the FCC enforced policies more strictly with the company due to an agreement accompanying a recent spectrum auction. AT&T passed almost all, but information remained scant on AT&T's notification system for prepaid customers (if there is one).

T-Mobile and Sprint Particularly Bad

But according to Khanifar's research, both T-Mobile and Sprint have unclear, illogical, and/or restrictive policies on the most important criteria -- actually unlocking the phones.

For T-Mobile, Khanifar found postpaid (contract) customers are prevented "from unlocking more than 2 devices per line of service in a 12 month period" and monthly plans have to be active for a minimum of 40 days, even if the contract is expired and everything is paid in full.

T-Mobile's prepaid customers -- strangely enough -- must have active accounts in good standing to unlock their devices, regardless of meeting the one-year requirement. That means if you hit a year with your device (that's otherwise ready for unlocking), T-Mobile won't do it, in violation of the CTIA code, if you've already cancelled your prepaid plan. However, T-Mobile later responded to Ars saying it will still unlock devices of former prepaid customers, but didn't budge on the two-device per year unlocking limit.

Sprint, deserves the title for king of customer lock-in. It provides an unclear, terminology-ridden description of its policy, which restricts unlocking to only active customers for international travel -- and then, only to a limited number of devices (1) per year. Former customers appear to have "no provision for unlocking phones for international use," according to Khanifar, even though it's one of the requirements of the CTIA agreement.

Domestic unlocking is restricted to devices Sprint nebulously terms "capable of being unlocked," a determination which is Sprint's prerogative. Former customers may have to load OTA updates, submit special request forms, and jump through other hoops in order to (maybe) get their old Sprint phone unlocked. But because Sprint specifies some devices to only fully work on their data and voice networks, it may be all for naught anyway.

Have you tried unlocking your phone or tablet with one of the four big carriers? What was your experience? Let us know in the comments!