As I've mentioned every now and again, I am an extremely satisfied customer of Ting, a "mobile virtual network operator" (MVNO) that piggybacks on T-Mobile and Sprint networks; it's a division of Tucows, the venerable software distribution service ("The Ultimate Collection of Windows Software), the same company that owns Hover (whom I use for domain registry services) and a bunch of smalltown, mom-and-pop cable operators through whom the company offers blazing fast fiber optic services.
Ting is the ISP I don't hate -- and actively love -- which makes it a rare beast indeed, and, improbably, it just got better.
The company has announced that -- unique among telcoms companies -- it is throwing its support behind the Right to Repair movement, an idea with widespread popular support that was nevertheless defeated in 20 states last year, thanks to aggressive lobbying led by Apple and John Deere.
I have no commercial relationship with Ting, though I have known its CEO Elliot Noss for many years and have sometimes been involved as a volunteer in the company's beta tests.
“I personally find it offensive that someone would say to me, ‘Well, I'm gonna make it so that you can't fix that thing,’” Andrew Moore-Crispin, Ting’s Director of Content, told me on a phone call. “I don’t think someone should be able to tell me I’m not allowed to. I paid for this phone, I should have the right to repair it.”
...
The announcement comes as part of survey Ting did, in which it asked consumers about the right to repair. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they had no idea what the right to repair is...
Once they grasped the concept, 69 percent of survey respondents said they’d prefer to either repair their own device or take it to a repair store instead of buying a new phone. More than 60 percent of respondents said they’d purchase DIY repair kits if the manufactured them and 58 percent of them said they’d prefer to purchase from a manufacturer that offered repair kits.
A Cell Phone Carrier Breaks With Big Telecom, Announces Support for Right to Repair Legislation [Matthew Gault/Motherboard]
