Dear US Senator for Silicon Valley, Please Help Fix the Mobile Phone Industry
Today, I received a response from my senator, Dianne Feinstein to a canned email form I had sent to her about mobile carrier practices. The following is her response and my reply.
Dear Mr. Baker:
Thank you for writing to me about exclusivity agreements in the wireless market and your support for legislative reforms. As a wireless phone customer myself, I understand your concerns. I welcome this opportunity to respond.
Although the market for wireless phone service has become increasingly competitive, some consumers have not seen the kind of efficient, reliable, and fair service that they want. Rather, according to the Better Business Bureau, wireless phone service has become the Nation's most complained-about industry.
I appreciate hearing your support for open access to wireless networks. I understand the frustration of purchasing a mobile phone that is locked and then not being able to use it with a different carrier. There have been multiple lawsuits filed by consumer advocates to prevent wireless carriers from locking their mobile phones, or at least to force carriers to find ways to guarantee interoperability of locked phones between networks.
How the courts resolve these cases will impact what practices are allowed and whether legislative action is warranted. With our State's large business sectors and diverse communities, any change in our telecommunications laws needs to take into consideration a variety of competing concerns since it will have far-reaching effects.
Several states, including California, have enacted or are in the process of enacting laws to protect wireless phone subscribers. Nonetheless, federal legislation may become necessary so that all Americans are treated fairly. I believe that any workable solution for telecommunications reform should focus first and foremost on consumers and the public interest, while also balancing the needs of the network, service, and information providers.
Please know that I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the Senate works to address these issues in the 111th Congress.
Once again, thank you for writing. If you have any further comments or concerns, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.
Best regards.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
A Response
Senator Feinstein–
Thank you for your response. I appreciate you giving some thought to this matter.
It's clear from your email that you've decided that wireless exclusivity is not an issue that deserves to make it into your portfolio. As the senator representing the Silicon Valley, and my representative, I must urge you to reconsider.
Mobile carriers in this country have taken advantage of consumers for far too long. There are a long string of examples where legislation, not court cases are called for.
- As covered in the New York Times last week, mobile carriers are making the us pay extra for simple services like voicemail. A bill to force carriers to allow users to set their own voicemail greetings, or one that forced them not to charge for listening to their service messages would go a long way toward controlling this out-of-control industry.
- In most other countries, customers are only charged for outgoing calls – much the same way landlines have worked in this country. In the US however, we're effectively double charged – for both outgoing and incoming calls. This practice, effectively allows mobile carriers to make twice as much off of each phone call. Legislation that enforced a "one charge per call" policy would go a long way toward straightening our backwards industry.
- As you may have heard, the FCC has just began an investigation of AT&T for potentially unfair exclusivity arrangements with Apple to the exclusion of Google and other VOIP providers. The issue is one of Net Neutrality: can AT&T control what data is allowed over its network? Users pay for access to "unlimited" data rates over the AT&T network. For them to disallow certain types of data because it competes with another aspect of their business is not only anti-competitive, it's censorship. I urge you to support the FCC in this investigation and take a strong stance on Net Neutrality.
Censorship ➔ Ambivalence
Photo: Stefan Zaklin/European Pressphoto AgencySomething has been bothering me for a long time about my generation (1980-1999~ish): we're ambivalent.
Let me take a moment to explain: I'm not talking about coffee vs. tea, or McDonald's vs. Burger King. It's not even an issue of Obama vs. McCain – we're just as clueless as the rest of the country when it comes to politics.
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Our parents we're one of the greatest generation(pun intended) of upstarts the US ever saw – they were responsible for protesting the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Watergate. The Baby Boomers, they knew how to protest. We, just don't seem to care.
There are tons of issues that the youth of this country could get riled up about. My top three: We've got a president that's blatantly broken the law with a do-nothing congress to boot. We're involved in not one, but two, failing wars that kill more of our generation every week. We've broken the prison system with more inmates than it can handle – largely due to the failed War on Drugs.
And what do we do? Do we write petitions? Vote out our congress? March on the Capitol? Riot? Demand that the troops come home? Do we do anything even remotely radical?
Bring back the 70s.
At least the hippies, blacks, and press knew when they were getting screwed. They stood up and did something about it. They marched, protested, investigated, demanded, pursued, and were otherwise activists!
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So, all that's been on my mind for about a year. Obviously, I'm perturbed by what I see to be a failing of my peers. Which is why when I read an article about the lack of true war photography in the New York Times, I felt both more perturbed and a little relieved.
Obviously, preventing pictures of dead soldiers from appearing in the press is yet another example of the Bush Administration's efforts at censorship.
…military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures as a matter of policy.
-4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images - NYTimes.com
Yet, as the article points out, during the Vietnam War, the press published photos of dead soldiers, civilians, and whatever else they please. This, in part, got the folks back home disgusted with the war. It got them out in the streets protesting the war. Perhaps this dumbing down of our media coverage has caused the American people to forget these wars. To forget their responsibility to tell the government when it has strayed down the wrong path.
I'm satisfied that I've found part of the explanation, but I'm more troubled by what the slow decay of the media is causing.
Ooooo Shiny!
Warning: This post a rant. It is highly political, and … well, I really just want to get this off my chest.
Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system [the free market] is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society.
-Americans may be losing faith in free markets - Los Angeles Times
I've blogged several times (1, 2, 3, more) in the last couple of weeks on the success of the free market in correcting downward trends in the news business. I've got a lot of faith in the law of supply and demand to eventually correct itself.
That's the keyword: eventually.
Markets don't correct themselves overnight. There is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to economics, but it seems that the US populace has become so enamored with instant feedback that we expect everything to just happen.
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Loading a web page: just happens.
Finding out the names of Bardgelina's twins: just happens.
9 soldiers dying in Iraq Afghanistan (oh right, we already forgot about that war): just happens.
Global warming doesn't just happen.
The energyoil deficit doesn't just happen.
The Presidency eroding constitutional rights of the Congress, the Judiciary, the Press, and the People, doesn't just happen.
An economic recession doesn't just happen.
A robust economy doesn't just happen.
This society, that so needs instant gratification, needs to learn that there are limits to what technology provides.
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Just because the cell phone lets us say "I'll just call you," instead of planning ahead,
Just because you can text message, twitter, facebook status, IM, or blog,
Just because you can find, meet, date, engage, online,
Just because we can watch live pictures of our tanks rolling across foreign boarders,
It doesn't mean that technology has solved all the world's problems. Our country, our society, has a system in place that works. Yes, the system needs to be changed from time to time, we've done it a lot. But do we need to abandon our Constitution, our economic policies, our way of life just because there are bad times?
The free market works. It goes in cycles of good and bad times, but it works. It's natural. Please, please, just because we've allowed our government to abandon its system, don't think the economy needs to change. It's not worth it! It's not right!
STOP with the ADD! The grass is not always greener, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Try not to pick up every shiny object that comes your way, sometimes, it's a chainsaw.
BBC NEWS | UK | Six Jailed for Supporting Terror
Six men convicted of supporting terrorism through speeches at a London mosque have been handed jail terms.
BBC NEWS | UK | Six jailed for supporting terror
The UK has just sentenced six men to jail terms based on something they said. That's right, 'freedom of speech' – not guaranteed by the UK government exists just a bit less than it did.
Granted, these men were Muslims who spoke out in favor of Al-Queda or other Islamist terrorists publicly. Granted, I have no liking of what they said, and I am personally very glad to see them in jail.
The question remains though – is it okay for a government to abandon the freedom of speech so blatantly?
