Instead, they’re hedgehogs, rolling up into a spiky ball every time anyone “threatens” the crutches they use to sustain their faltering businesses. Only by systematically removing these artificial retention tools can we force these carriers to become creative, innovative marketers who bring us services we actually need.

In the meantime, fuck ’em. Let’s force them to jump through expensive hoops and remove all of their spikes. They’ve been milking captive markets for too long.

-Ian.

—- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030416/ap_on_hi_te/ cell_phone_numbers

Wireless Cos. Fight Rule on Phone Numbers Wed Apr 16, 9:15 AM ET Add Technology – AP to My Yahoo!

By DAVID HO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Despite static, dropped calls and dead zones, Jeff Danielson sticks with his cell phone service, not out of loyalty but because he can’t stand the thought of asking clients to call a new phone number.

“I’ve been unhappy with the service, but I’ve given up doing anything about it because I really don’t want to lose the number,” said Danielson, 27, a Washington technology consultant. “I’m afraid I would lose clients that way.”

Federal regulators are sympathetic with Danielson’s plight and have ordered cell phone companies to let people take their numbers with them when they switch to a competitor. The wireless providers asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to block the regulation, arguing that keeping the same phone number is a convenience, not a necessity.

The cell phone companies told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the Federal Communications Commission (news – web sites)’s “number portability” rules will raise costs while doing little to increase competition.

“It’s very speculative to say this even offers consumer benefits,” said Andrew McBride, an attorney representing Verizon Wireless and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

McBride asserted the FCC (news – web sites) overstepped its authority and made legal errors in its order. Retaining the same phone number is not an essential service like making wireless providers supply enhanced 911 systems to help authorities locate cell phone users during emergencies, he argued.

The judges are not expected to rule for several months. Without court intervention, the regulations are to take effect Nov. 24.

Congress decided in 1996 that people can keep their traditional local phone numbers when they change phone companies. The FCC decided soon after that wireless carriers should offer that same ability to people in the largest 100 U.S. cities by June 1999.

The FCC extended that deadline three times, most recently granting a yearlong extension last summer after Verizon Wireless asked the commission to eliminate the requirement.

“Wireless companies will have stronger incentives to provide better service and lower prices if consumers can take their numbers,” said Chris Murray, an attorney for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. He said small businesses and self-employed people are particularly harmed when switching carriers because they lose numbers known by customers.

Most wireless companies argue that their industry is competitive enough and doesn’t need a regulatory boost. They say about 145 million people subscribe to U.S. cell phone systems, and about a third of them change carriers each year.

“The wireless industry is the most competitive telecommunications market on the planet,” McBride said after the hearing. He said the expense of providing the number switching service will take money away from better cell phone coverage and cheaper phones.

The wireless industry estimates the requirement will cost more than $1 billion in the first year and $500 million each year after that.

The industry also says the FCC’s number portability rules are unclear regarding traditional landline phone companies and give them an unfair advantage. The wireless companies want the FCC to declare that traditional landline phone companies must allow their customers to keep numbers when switching to cell phones.

Many cell phone users outside the United States, in Britain, Australia, Hong Kong and other places, already have the option of keeping their numbers when they switch carriers.

-Ian.

—— http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/technology/18CELL.html

November 18, 2002 Success of Cellphone Industry Hurts Service By SIMON ROMERO

Americans’ use of cellphones has increased so quickly that wireless networks are becoming overloaded, causing a growing number of customers to complain about calls that are inaudible or are cut off or are never connected in the first place.

And things could get worse before they get better, industry experts say, because even as cellphone companies are rolling out fancy features like digital photography and Internet-based games, they are hard-pressed to spend the money needed to improve basic service.

“This is a situation in which the wireless industry is a victim of its own success,” said James D. Schlichting, a deputy chief of the wireless communications bureau at the Federal Communications Commission.

Many of the industry’s service problems are a result of a huge growth of new customers. In 56 percent of the nation’s households, someone now subscribes to wireless phone service, more than double the percentage in 1995.

The surge in users is overwhelming the capacity to handle calls on wireless systems — whether because local transmitters are too few or too small, or because the local airwaves have become too crowded and carriers are unable to obtain larger swaths of radio frequencies.

The problems are compounded by basic economics. Customers have been attracted by the plunge in prices for wireless service. The average per-minute cost has dropped to 11 cents this year from 56 cents in 1995. For the phone companies that has meant a decline in average revenue per customer to $61 a month, from $74 in 1995.

And so, just when the wireless companies need to invest more money to accommodate all those new users, the companies are under increased financial strain.

As a result, the complaints are piling up.

The F.C.C. tracks only the few hundred complaints it receives each quarter — it recently reported fewer than in past years — but acknowledges that an increase in subscribers had worsened service problems. And surveys conducted for the industry itself show that complaints are rising.

“If I make 10 calls, at least three have to be redialed because they don’t go through,” said Orville Mills, who lives near Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and recently switched carriers to Sprint from T-Mobile. “The new services are just a distraction from not having the basics down.”

The percentage of all wireless subscribers who have called customer-service centers at least once in the last year to complain about service or because they had other problems has climbed to 61 percent, from 53 percent in 2000, according to J. D. Power & Associates, a company that measures customer satisfaction in many industries and sells it to the companies being scrutinized.

The level of such calls is higher than for many other consumer-service providers, including land-line telephone companies, cable-television operators and stockbrokers, according to Power. About 30 percent of the calls to customer-service centers were complaints related to dropped calls, bad reception or calls not going through, up from 19 percent in 2000. Other reasons included complaints and questions about billing, equipment and services.

The author of the study, Kirk Parsons, said the wireless companies are aware of the problem. He said he expected complaints to grow as the companies add new services, contributing to stress on the networks and subscribers’ confusion.

“It’s important to remember that cellphones are glorified radios,” said Travis Larson, a spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, the wireless industry’s main trade group. “They’re subject to interference from a lot of things, from building walls to sunspots to the weather. There will always be a trade-off between mobility and call quality.”

Meanwhile, the stock prices of AT&T Wireless Services and Sprint PCS, the two largest stand-alone publicly traded carriers, are down more than 45 percent this year on investor concern about revenues. And the two largest carriers, Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless, which are controlled by regional Bell companies, are struggling to find and pay for additional swaths of airwaves to carry calls.

The industry received something of a financial reprieve last Thursday from the Federal Communications Commission, which ruled that wireless companies would not have to pay the $16 billion they had offered for additional airwave licenses during a bidding process that is now being contested. The licenses had been seized by the F.C.C. from NextWave Communications and auctioned after NextWave filed for bankruptcy protection. But the licenses, and the airwave capacity they represent, are tied up by NextWave’s appeal of that seizure, which is now pending before the Supreme Court.

Another industry problem is the sheer technical complexity of sending and receiving wireless calls. Unlike conventional telephone systems, in which every customer is hardwired to the network, wireless systems rely on a delicate mesh of thousands of antenna towers — which often face resistance from local governments — and cellular relay stations.

The stations can easily be flooded by an increase in calling volumes. That vulnerability became clear in the hours after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, when the local wireless networks were effectively shut down by the surge of attempted calls.

Various new companies are trying to develop towers and other forms of transmission technologies that could handle such surges. But so far carriers remain reliant on systems that, in some ways, still resemble radio communications networks that were first developed in World War II.

Because of brisk demand, financial problems at wireless carriers are not as severe as those in other areas of telecommunications, where large companies like WorldCom and Global Crossing have sought bankruptcy protection. Even so, some investors think the only way to ensure industry stability will be to winnow the competing wireless players. Instead of six nationwide carriers, they say, a more economically feasible number might be three or four.

“Consolidation among wireless companies can’t fix these problems, but it can make them less severe,” said Frank J. Governali, an analyst at Goldman, Sachs.

For months, investors have been waiting for mergers that would shrink the number of large competitors. No deals have yet materialized, though, partly because of technical obstacles. Unlike nations in Europe and Asia with higher wireless usage rates, the United States does not have a single wireless technical standard that would make it easy for carriers with different systems to combine operations.

Verizon and Sprint, for instance, employ an American-designed standard called code division multiple access, or C.D.M.A. Meanwhile, AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile, formerly known as VoiceStream, use the global system for mobile communications, or G.S.M. format, common in Europe and Asia. Another large American carrier, Nextel, uses its own technology, called Iden.

Carriers have also resisted measures that would make the industry more consumer-friendly. In response to industry lobbying, for example, the F.C.C. has postponed until next fall a deadline for companies to start allowing “number portability” — letting customers keep their cellphone numbers even when they switch providers. The companies are reluctant to implement the measure, fearing it will create new costs while also encouraging customer defections.

“I’ve had the same number for three years,” said Sarah Vanderslice, a student at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York who subscribes to Sprint’s service. “The fear of losing it is the only thing that keeps me from dropping my cellular company.”

The F.C.C. has also repeatedly extended the industry’s deadlines for improving emergency-call abilities for wireless phones. Calls from cellphones are still much more difficult for emergency officials to pinpoint than calls from land-line phones. And the issue has become more pressing as the number of emergency calls from cellphones has grown to the current rate of more than 30 percent of 911 calls.

“The wireless industry is in need of a stricter taskmaster,” said David Heim, the managing editor of Consumer Reports magazine, which publishes an annual feature each year on cellular service problems. Although the F.C.C. has jurisdiction on certain operational matters, the wireless industry remains largely unregulated.

But few people expect the Bush administration’s F.C.C. to try to exert significant new authority. And even a former F.C.C. chairman from the Clinton years says that, in the main, it would be prudent to avoid more regulation.

“We have a robustly competitive wireless industry,” said Reed E. Hundt, the former F.C.C. chairman, who is now a senior adviser on information technologies for the management consultant firm McKinsey & Company. “Younger people recognize this in opting for wireless over wire line and putting up with some flaws in exchange for freedom of movement.”

Like their counterparts in Europe, carriers in the United States are hoping new services like text messaging and transmission of digital photos will eventually generate the additional revenue they need to put their finances on stronger footing. But aside from a small but loyal following of mainly younger subscribers that exchange text messages, none of the new services have attracted a large number of users.

And anyone who expects competitive market forces to quickly improve cellphones may be overly optimistic, some experts say. They note that the conventional wired telephone system has been evolving for more than a century and became widely dependable only in recent decades.

“Don’t hold your breath,” said Jeffrey Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Atlanta. “Service and the economic evolution of wireless are works in progress — it might be years before customers are truly satisfied.”

NEW YORK (AP) –Here’s another reason to check your telephone bill closely.

A subtle realignment this fall in the nation’s inscrutable tangle of phone systems could cause a surprising increase in what some consumers pay to call cell phones from traditional landlines.

The change, rooted in the different ways landline and wireless phone networks are laid out, means some calls to cell phones that were once considered local now incur higher toll charges.

For most people, the increases will be negligible. Verizon Inc., the largest regional phone company, estimates that in the 33 million households it serves, the average bill will rise pennies per month.

Even so, Verizon warned customers about the new policy in an insert with September phone bills and acknowledged that some people’s monthly charges could jump $10 or $20 unless they change their calling habits.

“This change may come as a shock to many wireline customers the first time they see it on their bills, and could cause callers to hesitate next time they reach for the phone and want to dial a wireless number,” said Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, a trade organization for wireless carriers.

No serious trouble reported

The billing change doesn’t appear to have caused serious trouble where it already has been in effect, mainly in the West and Midwest.

“I’m not aware that this is an issue that we get a lot of consumer complaints on,” said Federal Communications Commission spokeswoman Meribeth McCarrick.

Why is this happening?

Area codes are divided into “rate centers” with their own number prefixes. Calls to nearby rate centers are considered local, while those to further rate centers generate intra-state or regional toll prices. Calls between more spread-out points count as long-distance.

Because of differences in how wireless networks are set up, wireless carriers don’t need to get phone numbers in every local rate center. So your cell phone could have a number from a rate center distant from your home.

For such customers, a call from home to their cell phone could incur per-minute toll charges.

To stimulate use of mobile phones, wireless carriers years ago got landline companies to treat such calls as local. Wireless carriers reimbursed landline companies for the lost toll revenue — a process known as reverse billing or wide-area calling.

Reverse billing diminishes

Reverse billing has diminished over time, largely because wireless companies acquired numbers in more rate centers as their customer base exploded.

For example, in New York state, fewer than 6 percent of wireless phone exchanges still employ reverse billing, said Michael O’Connor, a director of federal regulatory issues at Verizon.

Similarly, Sprint PCS estimates that wireless billing covers fewer than 5 percent of its customers, said Jack Weyforth, manager of carrier interconnection. AT&T Wireless spokeswoman Rochelle Cohen said “a very small percentage of our customers have these sorts of phone numbers.”

On Nov. 24, reverse billing will begin to die altogether. The FCC is changing how phone numbers are allocated to different providers and in many cases reverse-billing systems aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with that switch.

The final blow to reverse-billing should come next year as consumers get “number portability,” the right to keep their mobile numbers if they switch carriers.

Michael Altschul, general counsel for the cell-phone industry group, said local phone companies asked regulators in several states to let them kill reverse billing.

That forced wireless companies to establish their own connections in local rate centers by leasing costly equipment and space from landline companies, he said.

“We’re disappointed with the (local phone companies) that they’re discontinuing this service, because it was meeting the needs of customers,” added Diane Rainey, a spokeswoman for wireless carrier Nextel Corp. Unclear how many affected

Sam Simon, chairman of the Telecommunications Research & Action Center, a consumer rights group, said complexities of the phone system make it unclear how widespread the new charges will be.

No phone company would give details on where people could be affected.

All nine states where BellSouth Corp. is the local phone provider got rid of the old billing system by Oct. 1, spokesman Jeff Battcher said.

In the 14 states served by Qwest Communications International Inc., the change is scheduled to take effect in November, though Qwest is working on ways to extend the old system wherever possible, spokeswoman Carey Brandt said.

Many SBC Communications Inc. customers experienced the change several years ago. People in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas will begin to see it this fall, SBC spokesman Kevin Belgrade said.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

———–

Published Oct 7, 2002 NET07

Envisioned by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, backed by Bill Gates — and financed in part by their bottomless wealth — the idea of delivering high-speed Internet via a constellation of satellites seemed almost a sure thing.

But after 12 years of management changes, network design revisions and, most recently, telecommunications industry turmoil, the vision of an Internet-in-the-sky has come crashing down to Earth.

Teledesic’s board has halted work by a contractor building two satellites, effectively putting the ambitious idea into deep hibernation.

“Obviously by suspending work on the contract, the board of Teledesic is saying, as we see it today, it’s not feasible to do this,” spokesman Todd Wolfenbarger said.

The recently announced decision means layoffs for 25 people. Another 10 or 12 employees will stay on, evaluating “possible alternative approaches,” a company press release said.

Teledesic, started in 1990, was envisioned as a network of space-based satellites that could deliver high-speed Internet to businesses and consumers anywhere in the world. The network would relay voice and data over a portion of the radio spectrum, with Teledesic hoping to offer full service by 2005.

It was the latest brainchild of one of Seattle’s favorite sons. McCaw almost single-handedly had spun together the new industry of cellular telecommunications. His company, McCaw Cellular, impressed telecom executives, Wall Street investors and customers alike and was bought by AT&T Wireless in 1994.

And Teledesic, although it never had more than 200 employees, certainly had its star power.

The company, based in Bellevue, Wash., had McCaw for a founder, Microsoft Chairman Gates as a backer, a $100 million commitment from Boeing Co. and $200 million from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. With some of the richest men in the world behind it, the company wasn’t hurting for money.

But despite the promise, the vision and the war chest, Teledesic had its issues.

Management changes

The company went through several management changes, including rotations through chief executives and co-chief executives.

“It’s hard to have consistency and hard to develop your road maps and service with different types of visions that are being replaced every so often,” said Sean Badding, vice president of the Carmel Group telecommunications research firm.

The designs and scope of the project changed as well through the years.

Ultimately, even men with very deep pockets have their limits.

“Really, for the people who have already invested money in this thing, it really doesn’t make sense,” Wolfenbarger said. “The risk is not outweighing what they think the reward is.”

Teledesic still owns rights to a portion of high-frequency spectrum.

But under agreements with the Federal Communications Commission, the company would have had to meet a series of deadlines with the ultimate goal of offering service by 2004, which it could not do under the current financial climate, Wolfenbarger said.

With no big customer lined up ready to commit, the board opted to put the project on ice.

“[McCaw] was supposedly a genius who could see the future and see around corners,” said O. Casey Corr, who wrote a biography of McCaw. “This proves that he’s mortal.”

Other companies, including McLean, Va.-based StarBand and Hughes, already offer Internet connections through a satellite network, though their service is far less ambitious than what Teledesic had planned.

StarBand recently filed for bankruptcy, joining other troubled satellite ventures, including Iridium. Backed by Motorola Corp., it built a satellite network offering voice and data service but, crippled by debt, ended up cutting off service two years ago. A new venture, Iridium Satellite, took over the bankrupt company’s assets.

Too much, too soon?

Teledesic, with its grander vision of high-speed connectivity, might have been ahead of its time, Badding said. “At this time, there are more questions than answers about the viability and the economics for these types of services.”

McCaw isn’t out of the satellite business altogether, either.

He still is a major investor in London-based ICO, which similarly hopes to offer satellite-based wireless communications in the future. At one point, McCaw sought to merge the company with Teledesic and issue new stock in the combined company. But he abandoned that effort early last year due to the sagging market.

Badding said he remains hopeful that McCaw one day will revive Teledesic.

“Teledesic still has tremendous amounts of potential in the future,” he said. “In the next seven to eight years, it clearly is going to be a different story.”

———–