Anthony Lacavera

Large Canadian telecommunications companies like Rogers, Telus, and Bell are loudly protesting a proposal to cap the maximum number of wireless licenses they can beg, borrow, or buy.

The proposal, from Wind Mobile and Quebecor Inc.’s Vidéotron Ltée, would tell some of Canada’s largest telecom companies they cannot buy up every available wireless license that becomes available in the future in an effort to lock out would-be competitors.  Both companies fear that without such a license cap, the deep pockets of larger providers could sustain a wireless cartel to keep mobile competition at bay.

“Competition doesn’t just ‘happen’,” said Wind Mobile’s Anthony Lacavera. “True competition and the long term benefits of competition for Canadians will occur when, and if, our regulatory framework is improved, our access to foreign capital is unhindered and the playing field is leveled to the benefit of Canadians.”

Lacavera’s upstart Wind Mobile has faced incumbent provider-fueled scrutiny over claims of foreign ownership violations in an effort to keep Wind’s discount service out of Canada.  In addition to fending off regulatory challenges, Lacavera is wary of Conservative Party policy towards wireless competition, which he suspects is too shallow and lacks important protections against further marketplace concentration.

The idea of a license limit met with predictable hostility from the three larger incumbents.

On Wednesday, Telus’ chief financial officer rejected the idea out of hand, telling the government they should not be giving advantages to discount carriers and foreign entities over Telus, which he said was more focused on “innovation.”

Wind Mobile

Rogers called a license cap “a slap in the face” to millions of their customers, and Bell pulled an AT&T — without allowing companies like Bell to have the chance to outbid everyone else, Canada will run the “risk of lagging” behind the United States, harm innovation, and deprive the government of much needed auction revenue.

Bell CEO George Cope also warned letting foreign companies into the Canadian market could leave rural Canada with older technology.  At the risk of shooting down his own earlier argument, Cope specifically targeted his remarks at U.S. carriers, who presumably could be among Canada’s future wireless players.  In Cope’s mind, U.S. providers like AT&T would treat Canada as an afterthought.

“If you really believe that if a U.S. carrier had owned Bell at the time we launched HSPA+ (an advanced iteration of 3G), do you really believe Prince Edward Island, that province, would have had HSPA+ before Chicago?” Cope asked. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Large incumbent carriers also accused the smaller competing upstarts of simply trying to boost their own value before they sell out.  Telus and Rogers should know — they fought over buying that competition, like Microcell’s Fido, which Rogers eventually acquired in 2004.

More than 200 Verizon customers in Pennsylvania found their checking accounts balance-challenged when Verizon accidentally withdrew as much as $400 from those already paid in full.

Stop the Cap! reader Chandalee in Pittsburgh sent word her family’s checking account saw a surprise withdrawal from Verizon amounting to hundreds of dollars which helpfully paid for another customer’s past due balance.

“I was outraged when I saw Verizon cleaned us out, and I only learned about it when my debit card was declined at the grocery store — an incredibly embarrassing situation,” Chandalee shares.  “If we didn’t have bank reform, our bank would have probably charged us another $300 in bounced debit transaction fees before we learned about what Verizon did.”

Chandalee logged into her bank’s website when she got home and discovered the surprise charge from Verizon.

“I called them on the phone, they hung up on me twice, then told me they didn’t know what I was talking about,” Chandalee says. “I told them I have nearly 400 reasons they were working my last nerve and if they didn’t want to see my face in theirs, they had better put back my money.”

Verizon accused Chandalee of being rude.

“They don’t know what rude is,” she retorts.  “I asked for a supervisor and the woman — Ms. Jefferson or something, tells me she is the supervisor, and I told her get someone who supervises her ass on the line real quick.”

Finally, someone noticed her account was already paid in full and they couldn’t find evidence of the extra withdrawal, leading to a new series of questions about whether she had a Verizon Wireless account and maybe she meant to call them instead.

“As if Verizon isn’t also Verizon Wireless… it sure looks like the same red “V” to me — besides I have Sprint,” Chandalee said.  “They don’t know who they are dealing with.”

After logging more than two hours on the phone with Verizon, the stalemate ended in a draw.  Verizon wanted copies of the bank statement showing the charges and Chandalee was speed dialing her bank to reverse them.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTAE Pittsburgh Verizon Mixes Up Billing, Charges Customer Extra 385.mp4[/flv]

Last Thursday, the mystery was solved when WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh reported Chandalee wasn’t the only customer suffering from Verizon Empty Bank Account Syndrome.  It turned out a “system glitch” was responsible for payments being withdrawn from the “wrong accounts,” and Verizon promised a quick fix.  Chandalee wonders if the only way to get Verizon’s attention is to call the local TV station whenever the bill is wrong, because they sure didn’t listen to her when she called.  In the end, her bank reversed the charges and Chandalee told Verizon to delete all auto-debit information on her account.  “I will write these people my own check from now on,” she says.  “People need to watch their bank accounts so this doesn’t happen to them.”  (2 minutes)

[Updated 10:14pm — We received word the 200+ impacted customers were from across the nation, not just in Pennsylvania.]

A consumer group has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission alleging that Verizon Wireless is violating its agreement with federal authorities by attempting to restrict the use of third-party wireless tethering applications.

The basis of the complaint, filed by Free Press, is that Verizon agreed not to “deny, limit, or restrict” customers from accessing the applications of their choosing as part of Verizon’s LTE license spectrum agreement.

“Verizon’s conduct is bad for the public and bad for innovation. It also appears to be illegal under the FCC’s rules that govern Verizon’s LTE network. Users pay through the nose for Verizon’s LTE service, and having done so, they should be able to use their connections as they see fit. Instead, Verizon’s approach is to sell you broadband but then put up roadblocks to control your use of it,” said Free Press policy counsel Aparna Sridhar.  “In 2007, Verizon argued aggressively against the adoption of these basic openness protections. Having lost that policy battle but won the auction for the spectrum licenses, Verizon has adopted a new regulatory strategy: simply ignore the rules on the books. The Commission must move quickly to investigate and stop these harmful practices.”

As Stop the Cap! reported earlier, Verizon has taken measures to try and warn off customers using the third-party tethering apps instead of purchasing the company’s $20 tethering plan, which offers 2GB of data usage per month.  In addition to text warning messages, the company has asked Google to disable access to tethering software in the Android Market for Verizon customers.

From Free Press’ complaint:

Efforts to disable smartphone features and create barriers to this useful, productive, pro-innovation activity should cause concern no matter who initiates them; but when Verizon Wireless interferes with the use of third-party tethering applications, that conduct also violates the rules governing its LTE network. When Verizon purchased the licenses for the spectrum over which it has deployed LTE, it agreed to abide by a set of pro-consumer, pro-innovation openness principles. In particular, Verizon promised that it would not “deny, limit, or restrict the ability of [its] customers to use the devices and applications of their choice.” Verizon’s recent move to limit and restrict access to tethering applications by actively requesting that Google make them unavailable in the Android Market (the Google market for mobile applications) deliberately and unequivocally violates this prohibition. The FCC should immediately open an investigation to assess Verizon’s practices and determine appropriate penalties for this clear breach of the Commission’s rules.

[…] When the FCC auctioned the C Block of the Upper 700 MHz spectrum — the spectrum on which Verizon has deployed its LTE offering — the Commission adopted important license conditions to protect the openness of broadband networks. It provided that licensees using that spectrum “shall not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of their customers to use the devices and applications of their choice.” In the words of Chairman Kevin Martin, the Commission adopted the conditions to ensure that “[c]onsumers will be able to use the wireless device of their choice and download whatever software they want onto it.”

AT&T has been mailing letters to customers caught tethering without the benefit of an add-on plan that if they don’t stop, they will be automatically enrolled in a $45 tethering-data plan this Saturday.  But Stop the Cap! has learned some tethering customers have already been scheduled for enrollment in the pricey plan, even though they abandoned the use of the tethering application that got their account flagged.

The warning letter, dated May 31st, gave Stop the Cap! reader “K” less than 10 days to notify AT&T they are not authorized to make any plan changes without our reader’s explicit consent.  When “K” called AT&T, the company explained the account had been flagged for the ‘tethering violation’ and was scheduled to be enrolled in the $45 DataPro 4GB for Smartphone Tethering data plan this Saturday.

“K” is not the only reader discovering AT&T has plans to change their account this weekend, resulting in dramatically higher bills.

Kai from San Francisco noted he started receiving text warning messages about tethering starting last month, discontinued use of the app that allowed him to avoid paying AT&T’s tethering prices, and still received AT&T’s letter and further text message warnings anyway.  He says it is a good thing he called AT&T.

“I didn’t believe AT&T’s claim that I would not be auto-enrolled in this tether plan if I stopped the tethering, especially after receiving their letter,” Kai writes.  “Sure enough, AT&T had already scheduled my enrollment, which I was able to stop by calling them.”

AT&T is quoting some callers portions of their terms and conditions:

The company has also told some callers complaining about the tethering crackdown that use of third party applications to tether without payment to AT&T already represents a breach of the customer agreement, so waiving an early termination fee may not be an option.

Stop the Cap! recommends consumers who have received text warning messages from AT&T about unauthorized tethering call AT&T and explicitly opt out of any data plan changes scheduled by the company.  This is particularly important for customers grandfathered in AT&T’s unlimited smartphone data plan, because once forfeited (even by AT&T’s own actions), the company has declared you cannot get it back.

See the entire letter from AT&T below the jump.

… Continue Reading

A Cincinnati-area man found a DirecTV promotion from his local phone company promising a full package of television programming with a DVR box for just $30 a month.  A month later, that “bargain” literally emptied his checking account of more than $400.

Cincinnati Bell, like several other telephone companies, tries to compete for “triple play” customers accustomed to one bill for phone, Internet, and television service.  But where the company’s fiber network does not extend, customers can only get telco-TV by signing up for a DirecTV satellite television package.

Gary Gideon of Westwood learned the hard way that phone company promotions promising attractive prices are often tempered with paragraphs of fine print which make savings elusive.  In this case, the trouble began when Gideon thought he was receiving the standard DirecTV DVR that was included in the promotion.  Instead, the company supplied him with an HD DVR that carries a hefty additional charge, turning his $29.99 price he was originally promised into $49.85 instead — nearly $20 extra a month.

When Gideon complained about the surprise charges, he was offered a DVR downgrade, if he was willing to pony up an expensive deposit he was never asked to pay for the more deluxe model.  The installer responsible for Gideon’s setup promised he could walk away and cancel the package without any harm done.  But a month later, DirecTV deducted nearly $400 from his checking account to cover “early termination fees.”

Despite the assurances Gideon received, the satellite company’s customer service agents refused to budge on waiving the termination fee for just a few weeks of service, telling Gideon “nobody” has the power to waive such fees.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WKRC Cincinnati Unexpected Satellite Cable Fees 6-2-11.mp4[/flv]

Nobody except the media or an empowered customer service representative.  WKRC-TV in Cincinnati covered Gideon’s nightmare and found DirecTV only too willing to reverse the early termination fees they refused to refund earlier.  They said it was “good customer relations” to do so.  It’s also good public relations on the six o’clock news.

When dealing with satellite providers delivering service on behalf of a phone company, always carefully review the fine print for equipment and installation fees, contract terms and obligations, and disclosures for any additional charges.  If the equipment does not match what the offer provided, refuse it.  Remember that the truck plastered with DirecTV logos that appears in your driveway to handle the installation is probably an independent contractor — one that usually cannot make promises on behalf of the satellite company.  (2 minutes)