I own a small business in Texas selling electronics and doing repairs in an effort to go green in the USA. Upon learning about the working conditions of most big box electronics manufacturers, I have made it a goal to keep electronics alive as long as possible, and find any avenue of which to avoid buying from any of the larger retail companies that participate in unfair/unsafe practices (regardless of how difficult that goal is becoming).
I am curious to see what sort of financial/administrative hurdles are hindering Fairphone from being distributed in the US, and if there is any way I could use me business to assist.
I understand one main one being the FCC’s ridiculous requirements for even getting the phones approved in the first place, but I want to know what other issues may be getting in the way.
In any case, I love what Fairphone have done for the electronics industry. Businesses like yours bring me hope in a much better future for us all, and I want to be a part of the movement no matter what it requires. I hope I am starting the conversation the right way by starting here, but if this needs to be a more personal conversation, I am open to communicating by phone or email.
Welcome to the community forum! 
Mind it though, that you are only talking to the Fairphone community here, not the the Fairphone company, and that you won’t get any official answer here. If you want to talk to them directly, please #contactsupport or contact @formerFP.Com.Manager (the community manager).
Thank you so much for the quick reply! I’ll copy this post over with the appropriate hashtag. I would like to keep this thread open in case there is anyone in the public community that may be willing and able to help make this happen.
Hi Jason,
great to see that you are interested in Fairphone!
Please keep in mind, though, that the current FP3(+) devices do not support all of the spectrum that is being used for 4G in the US due to technical limitations of the hardware. See
Connectivity of FP3/FP3+ outside of Europe – Support (fairphone.com)
for a short official explanation. One can only hope that future Fairphones will work more globally.
Best wishes,
Thomas
Thank you for the info! I’m aware of the connectivity limitations that Fairphone has in the US network, but I know a good number of people who would prefer a phone that has a slower connection speed over a phone made from the usual tech giants. Are you saying that the coverage will be extremely limited, or nonexistent? I read a few documents about US coverage, and it seems to suggest that it’s still possible to be able to use Fairphone in the US, it just won’t be as capable as it is in Europe. I’m perfectly open to being wrong with how I interpreted what I read, I just want to get a better understanding of the situation. Quite frankly, a good number of Americans are sick of being forced to do business with shady manufacturers, and would prefer practically any alternative.
Taken from the link in previous post
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047326452
I really have no info, but some remarks in a techcrunch article based on an interview with Bas van Abel.
Though he hints it might look to offer additional smartphones in order to enter the US, a major market it’s so far not addressed at all.
And there is this statement on the Fairphone support homepage, that at least raises hope for selling outside the EU:
We do not sell or ship Fairphone products outside of Europe at the moment… yet. The good news is, we plan to start delivering to a selection of countries outside of the mentioned European countries. The question at the moment is, how fast can we make this happen?
As an Amsterdam-based organization, we wanted to launch the Fairphone products in Europe. For the coming time, we will continue to focus our sales efforts on this region. At the same time, we are researching the market and logistic possibilities to sell outside of Europe.
@JasonCaesar, because of the pandemic it appears nobody on the forum went on vacation to the USA since the FP3’s launch to test its performance there. We can only speculate that it will work on more networks than the FP2 did.
The information there is somewhat outdated as the FP3 has been FCC certified. (@formerFP.Com.Manager, could it be updated?)
I just added this to the list of errors on the Fairphone homepage, as this is really checked worked on.
Thank you all for the kind responses to my post. I really hope to someday see better business practices in the US, but I am happy to see that there is an interest in getting Fairphone out to our corner of the planet. Now it’s on to tackle the rest of the messes we have allowed to happen in the big tech industry. Please let me know if there is any way I can assist in getting Fairphone into the US market.
Well, that’s hard to tell, since this community has in general no insight into the Fairphone business decisions.
But if you have any special kind of expertise or connections, … (maybe some business organisation, that you are part of?)
Who knows?
If anyone, maybe @formerFP.Com.Manager would know, if there is some role you can play.
Just let her know.
This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.