/rant

Posted on by lhl

Now that I’m on T-Mobile, I need to try to figure out whether I really need my SprintPCS phone anymore. I want to keep the number, as it’s been my primary number for the past year and a half. SprintPCS offers a $5/mo Vacation Plan, and call-forwarding for $0.10/minute, which I think would be okay. Going through my invoices, I noticed that of the usual $53.82 I pay every month, $8.83 (over 16%) was going towards taxes and other regulatory fees. Here’s an example:

Taxes and Regulatory Related Charges
Los Angeles City Utility Users Tax 4.33
California 911 Tax 0.32
California Universal Lifeline Tele Service 0.63
California Teleconnect Fund Surcharge 0.13
California Relay Service Device Fund 0.21
California High Cost Fund Surcharge 0.62
California State Excise Tax 0.16
USA Federal Tax 1.38
Other Surcharges and Fees
California P.U.C. Tax 0.05
USA Regulatory Obligations & Fees 1.00
  8.83

Now, taxes are all well and good, but what I want to know is, if I’m paying this much every single month (as well as other cellular customers), why the hell is service so bad? And why is the FCC pandering to the telecommunications companies, and are not accountable to us, the taxpayers (which according to the CTIA, as of the writing of this post is comprised of 137,458,902 subscribers)? To wit:

Hopefully, we can all agree that telephone number portability is a good thing for the consumer. It saves him the hassle of changing his number and prevents him being held hostage and staying with an otherwise crappy service. The Telecommunications Act in 1996 made number portability a statutory requirement, and gave a deadline of December 31, 1998 for land lines, [according the FCC FAQ] wireless numbers were exempt from these deadlines (see Illuminet Whitepaper (PDF), FCC Telephone Number Portability FAQ). Now sometime after (I dug through dockets, but 1) I’m lazy, 2) the FCC search engine sorta sucks. Try FCC 98-82 (PDF) and FCC 97-74, FCC 99-19), the FCC actually called for a deadline on Wireless Number Portability. Here’s a Bellcore press release (selling solutions to meet WNP) back in September, 1998 talking about the upcoming Phase I deadlines.

In July (FCC 02-215), the industry was granted another forbearance. The November 24, 2002 deadline was shifted a year. The current deadline is November 24, 2003. According to this CNET article: “This is the third occasion on which carriers have been given more time to make number portability occur. The FCC issued its first delay in 1998.”

Now, if you believe the telco lobbyists (led by Airtouch and GTE, now Verizon), phone number portability is a bad thing. They say stuff like:”…the U.S. wireless market is already highly competitive and that no substantial barriers exist that prevent customers from choosing the wireless service that best serves their needs.” Also, from the same article is this laughable piece of FUD: “The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has stated that wireless carriers must implement WLNP in November 2003, giving carriers little more than a year to make the necessary network and OSS upgrades that will allow for number portability.” Yes, it’s one year if you don’t count the past 5 years they had already been delaying. Who are they kidding? If the competition is so great, then why do all the carriers sucks so much? (I’ve written about my Verizon experiences before) Has it occurred to any of these people that maybe the reason there’s so much churn is because they provide horrible “service”? “Over half (52 percent) of subscribers responding to the survey said the availability of number portability made it more likely they would switch carriers.” Doesn’t that number itself practically scream that Wireles Number Portablity is in fact desperately needed, and that not having it is anti-competitive?

Here’s some extra links I found while getting this out of my system:

Oh, hey, just saw that I had missed this link, here’s a Newsletter from January 28, 2002 entitled A Number Game that covers the same topic.