Nokia's gone out of their way to make their devices work on as many networks and frequencies as possible, they're even bringing in Wimax compatibility soon. It's in their interests to do this because more network compatibility = more hardware sales. Nokia only get their money from hardware sales, they don't get a share of your phone bill.

If anyone is in need of an anti-trust investigation it's the phone network operators who lock phones, as there is no technical reason for doing so. The only reason they do that is to reduce competition, exactly the kind of thing that anti-trust laws are meant to stop. I know this for sure because I've lived in a country where phone locking was illegal, and the phone system didn't have any problems because of it.

If you want to buy a car in installments you don't have it locked to one brand of fuel, so why should a phone bought in installments be locked to one brand of network?

To my surprise… no phone company is present in this segment!

This makes me wonder, Is this segment so small that no handset maker is present?

Until somebody comes up with a decent offering I shall continue my pursuit of a good second hand phone!!!

To my surprise… no phone company is present in this segment!

This makes me wonder, Is this segment so small that no handset maker is present?

Until somebody comes up with a decent offering I shall continue my pursuit of a good second hand phone!!!

Offtopic:
The discussion about the phones being locked to a specific carriers wireless technology is quite doubtful.
However locking it into one operator is more likely.
From what I know US don’t have this system about subsidies on the handsets from the operators in which locking it seems a bit unreasonable.
(I might be totally wrong on this one)

Here in Norway the operators can choose to lock the devices due to subsidies on the handset. However we can unlock our phones anytime by paying the amount of the subsidies.

As I’ve never owned a operatorlocked device I have no experience of that. (Only some of my family members have)

The locking of the hardware, is however (no matter how small chance) possible.
Just look at some of the HTC phones (HTC Touch Diamond?) which had some of it’s 3G functions locked down. This was possible through software.

Another interesting thing I heard from a podcast (from twit.tv) was that the iPhone had their firmware sent to AT&T to get it approved, before putting it into the handset.

So all in all I don’t think that christexaport is totally on the wild here.
From my experience of Nokia phones this is very unlikely from Nokia’s side. I can’t say that for other vendors.