WASHINGTON WATCH
FCC Should Safeguard Consumer Interests in Merger Review, Says Simon – The Department of Justice this week approved the mammoth $78 billion merger of AT&T and BellSouth without placing any conditions on the deal. The issue now moves to the Federal Communications Commission, which is expected to take up the issue on Friday, October 12. Given AT&T’s history of raising the rates and fees it charges its long distance subscribers residing outside the old 13-state SBC local service region, TRAC would like AT&T to commit to a moratorium on long distance rate and fee increases as a condition any FCC approval of the deal. “AT&T has taken advantage of its legacy out-of-region long distance subscribers for long enough,” said TRAC founder and chairman Samuel A. Simon. “We urge the FCC to offer some relief to these long-suffering consumers by placing meaningful preconditions on an eventual merger approval.” Despite increased competition from wireless devices and third-party and cable VoIP services, local and long distance cost increases for consumers have far outpaced the rate of inflation over the last several years. “If the FCC is going to allow a dominant industry player to grow even more, it should get meaningful commitments from AT&T to ensure that consumers can continue to afford basic local and long distance phone service,” said Simon. For more information of the DOJ’s approval of the AT&T-BellSouth merger, click here.
WIRELESS WATCH
Text Message Spam Is An Expensive Annoyance - In September, many Sprint/Nextel and Verizon Wireless subscribers were the unwitting victims of text messaging spam promoting bogus energy stocks. While both companies moved quickly to stop the spam, consumers who opened the messages may have incurred fees of 10¢ per message opened. Users who feel that they were charged for opening spam text messages should contact their provider to get the charges removed from their bill. Verizon Wireless subscribers using the company’s “Get TXT” text messaging service may be able to protect themselves from some spam attacks by logging in to their “Get TXT” accounts and enabling text message blocking for messages coming from e-mail and/or the Web. For more information on how to do this, click here. Since so-called “brute-force” attacks can be used to spam many of the e-mail and Web-based text-messaging services operated by most of the major wireless carriers, users may want to consider contacting their providers to see if there is some way that they can enable similar blocking measures as well. Doing so could save them the time and effort associated with calling a wireless carrier to argue about a particular charge on their bills. For more information on this issue, check out the recent article on the topic on MSNBC.com by clicking here.
TRAC AND YOU
Reader Offers Advice on Caller ID - In last week’s edition of TRACNotes, we discussed the high proportion of calls that tend to appear on Caller ID as “out of area” or “unavailable.” Reader Samuel Thomas, a Senior Account Executive with OneEighty Communications, wrote in with the following great advice that was just too good to keep to ourselves (quoted with permission of the author):
In you article about how accurate Caller ID information is, you may want to pay attention to which local carriers the call is being made from and to. Within the telephone industry, there is the Line Information Database (LIDB) and the Caller Name Database (CNAM) that are both administered by VeriSign. These databases contain the information that telephone companies pass along when a consumer orders Caller ID. The accuracy of the information, and whether or not the information even exists, is in the hands of the carrier that provides the telephone line making the call. A consumer may have service from a good company who consistently updates their information in the databases, but if a call comes in that originated with a less responsible carrier, the information may not be there for your carrier to deliver.
Your information on how often calls come in with good information seemed pretty standard for the industry, but the percentages can fluctuate widely depending on who calls you and what type of service they have. Cell phone companies often do not participate in the databases, and several of the newer VOIP carriers do not participate. If you get a lot of calls from either of these groups, the percentage of calls coming in "unavailable" or "out of area" can go up quickly. YOUR phone company does not have anything to do with this. It rests solely on the carrier that the call originated from - they are the ones who did not register the number.
After all of that, I would still agree that consumers should be careful before paying for what is really an expensive service, particularly considering the problems with accuracy. You should also point out that, lately, many telemarketers appear to be using outgoing telephone numbers for their calls that are intentionally NOT registered in the databases. My favorite use for caller ID is NEVER answer an out-of-area or toll free number without good name information unless I recognize the accompanying number as belonging to someone that I know.
Great advice! Screening calls is a great way for consumers to avoid those pesky telemarketers who intentionally mask their identity from Caller ID. Good point as well about the local phone company not being solely responsible for Caller ID information. That said, one could argue that consumers should expect that their local phone company would do its best to work with other companies to provide the most reliable and complete Caller ID data possible. After all, they’re the ones that consumers are paying for the service.
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!
TRACNotes is distributed to TRAC members and those who have signed up on the TRAC website "Newscenter." If you do not want to receive TRACNotes, simply click here and let us know. You won't receive these in the future. We hope you choose to remain a part of our network, and that you find TRACNotes helpful. Our goal is to provide you with useful information about what is happening in the telecommunications marketplace for consumers and to keep you up to date on TRAC's policy advocacy. If you like what you see, please consider becoming a member of TRAC by clicking here.
©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"
