Actually that's backward. Monthly plans are for UNlocked phones. The idiotic thing about locked phones in the USA is that they're given to customers who are ON

Actually that's backward. Monthly plans are for UNlocked phones. The idiotic thing about locked phones in the USA is that they're given to customers who are ON CONTRACT. Therefore, if the customer takes his phone to another network, he still has to pay the original one! Why on earth would the phone company want to prevent people from paying for service they're not even using? The sheer stupidity of this behavior is almost worse than the offensiveness of the entire phone-locking concept.