BUCKS WATCH
AT&T Announces Another Flurry Of Rate Increases - This spring has seen frequent announcements of rate and fee increases from AT&T. On April 16, AT&T announced another round of such changes. First, the per-call surcharge on AT&T’s 10¢ Offer long distance plan is increasing by 20¢ to 69¢ for all state-to-state calls and for intrastate calls in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Oregon. Second, subscribers to AT&T’s Value Rate Plan long distance plan will soon see a new $3.95 Monthly Recurring Charge (MRC) added to their bills. The fee will be assessed each month whether a long distance call is placed or not. Finally, subscribers to AT&T’s bundled local and long distance plans in Nevada will be seeing a number of fee increases. The MRC on the AT&T One Rate Local, One Rate USA, and One Rate Advantage plans will increase by $2.00 to $33.95, $59.95, and $64.95, respectively. The MRC on the AT&T One Rate State plan will increase by $3.00 to $48.95. All of these rate and fee increases will become effective May 1, 2006. For more information on these changes, click here. As we mentioned in the March 17 edition of TRACNotes, the continued increases in the cost of AT&T local service plans outside of the 13-state SBC service area has made AT&T local service plans significantly more expensive than comparable local service plans offered by other phone companies. This latest round of increases in Nevada only serves to reinforce our advice to affected subscribers to “bail now!”
POLICY WATCH
TRAC Applauds Passage of Virginia Communications Flat Tax – TRAC commends Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine and the Virginia General Assembly for passing the nation’s first communications flat tax bill. The bill, which replaces four existing communications taxes with a flat 5% tax regardless of technology will help Virginia consumers to compare more easily the services and plans that are right for them, said TRAC research associate John Breyault. “In an era where different devices and technologies increasingly perform the same functions, there is a need for consumers to have a single tax regime to calculate the true costs of these services,” said Breyault. “We applaud Virginia for recognizing this need and acting to help reduce the confusion that many telecommunications consumers face.” As a next step, TRAC calls on state regulators to require that discretionary carrier fees such as property tax surcharges, regulatory fees, and carrier cost recovery fees be rolled in to the monthly service fee. Doing so would make consumers’ comparison shopping even easier. For more information on the new Virginia flat tax, click here.
TRAC AND YOU
Are you considering cutting the cord and going wireless? – TRAC has just done some calculations and it looks like having a traditional “corded phone” and no wireless phone is in fact slightly cheaper than having a wireless phone without a “corded phone.” For most consumers, the price difference alone isn’t a big issue since almost all consumers today have both a corded and a wireless phone. The problem lies in “overbuying,” when consumers buy more minutes (whether via landline or wireless service) than they actually need or use. With the ability to get so-called “naked” DSL (i.e. without including local phone service) from phone companies and high speed cable modem service from cable companies, more people seem to be willing to take the plunge and go totally wireless. For many consumers, this cuts out the costly redundancy of having a landline that they rarely use, but pay $20-$30 or more per month to maintain. TRAC would like to know what you are thinking about “cutting the cord” and relying exclusively on wireless phones. Have you tried it? Do you like it? Do you find that you are using more minutes and pushing your wireless bill too high? Have your phone bills dropped significantly? Do you find it inconvenient for three-way calling, or are the handset’s features, such as speaker phone, sufficient? Let TRAC know! E-mail your thoughts to trac@trac.org.
WIRELESS WATCH
T-Mobile Continues to Shine In Customer Satisfaction Survey – J.D. Power and Associates released its annual Regional Customer Satisfaction Ratings report this week and T-Mobile has again garnered kudos for its strong service plan options, cost of service, and billing. Verizon Wireless tied with T-Mobile in five of the six regions surveyed thanks mostly to Verizon Wireless’ strong record on call quality. Overall customer satisfaction with wireless carriers also showed notable improvement in the survey, gaining 3 percent since the 2005 survey. In particular, survey respondents noted increased satisfaction in the areas where the industry has been aggressively marketing new services and offering more attractive pricing options. For example, the service plan options and cost of service factors receive the largest increase in satisfaction ratings from 2005. To read more about the J.D. Power and Associates survey, click here.
Sprint Family Locator Offers Another Tool to Parents – One of the hottest trends in the wireless industry this year is location-based GPS tracking services embedded in wireless devices. Last week, Sprint Nextel unveiled its Family Locator service, targeted at parents who want to be able to pinpoint the location of their children (or at least their wireless handsets). The service, which costs $9.99 per month, allows parents and guardians to list up to four phone numbers they want to locate. The Family Locator service then displays an interactive map on the subscribers’ handset or on a PC to show where the desired handset is currently located. The child is notified via text message each time that their location is requested by a parent or guardian. The Safety Check feature of the Family Locator service offers worried parents an additional layer of security. The parents or guardian can set alerts to notify them when the child arrives at a specified location, such as a school, home or a relative's house at a designated time. For example, a parent or guardian can be notified whether a child has arrived at school by 8:15 a.m. each day. Sprint Family Locator is available for download on 17 phone models and can be used to locate 30 GPS-enabled phone models on the Nationwide Sprint PCS Network and the Nextel National Network. For more information on Family Locator, click here.
INTERESTING LINKS
FCC Main Page: http://www.fcc.gov
FCC Complaint Form - http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475.cfm
List of State Regulatory Commissions: http://www.naruc.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=15
What do you think? Got a tip you want to share? Nominate your "Scam of the Week" and your "Tip of the Week" - If we select your submission, we'll give you a one-year free membership in TRAC and acknowledge your contribution by name in TRACNotes. Send an e-mail to trac@trac.org to submit your ideas!
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©2006 Telecommunications Research and Action Center. TRAC grants unlimited rights to reproduce TRACNotes or any information contained in it provided attribution is given as follows: "Source: Telecommunications Research and Action Center. http://www.trac.org"
