I’d be curious to know what the breakdown is between “maintain pretense of subsidy”; “make switching to a competitor substantially more expensive”; and “the technological measures are actually the only controls” is.
If you are dealing with an on-contract customer with reasonable credit I’d assume that it’s pretty much entirely a combination of the first two: the customer isn’t going to tank their credit rating or flee to somewhere exotic just to skip out early on a handset payment plan; but simply breaking out the payment plan as a separate item and not crippling the phone would make the arrangement more obvious to them as well as increasing the risk that they’ll indulge in cheap data abroad or similar.
In the cheap seats, the lockdown might actually be all their is: the sort of phones sold for prepaid purposes tend to be pretty grim; but often not grim enough to actually break even when retailing for $20; but in absence of a contract or any way to follow up the phone could well walk if it were technically capable of doing so.
None of these scenarios make me sympathetic to team telco’s position; but knowing their motives would be of interest.
