Stopping robocalls

Landline customers in swing states have been under assault since last weekend from waves of robocalls, some containing false and misleading voting information, that have come in at rates of 20, 30, or even more every hour.

“Robocalls” are the annoying recorded messages mass-blasted to landline customers from candidates, their wives, political allies, and astroturf groups encouraging support for particular candidates or demonizing their opponents. While most landline customers receive a handful of “get out the vote” reminders during Election Day, voters in hotly-contested swing states are under siege with dozens upon dozens of recorded political messages. Now some are unplugging their phones until the polls close.

In Wisconsin, one woman said she received “calls” from President Obama, Governor Romney, and 63 others before she finally pulled the plug on her phone.

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Norma Escribano-Smith in Grandville got 65 robocalls on her phone before she finally became so exasperated, she unplugged it. WXMI in Grand Rapids reports on life in a swing state. (3 minutes)

Some groups blast out calls opposing specific ballot measures — marriage equality and tax measures are two hot issues this season. Others are more clandestine about their true identity, launched by dirty tricks firms that are masters in the dark art of the misleading robocall.

In Florida, registered voters in heavily Democratic areas report getting calls identified by Caller ID as the local Obama campaign office. The recorded messages that follow inaccurately tell voters the election has “been extended” and they can “vote for Obama tomorrow” by dropping off their ballots at a local polling place. The local Obama office is not the source of the calls, however. Someone is faking (better known as “spoofing”) the Caller ID information.

In Tucson, Ariz., local Republicans are getting calls suggesting their party supports a state proposition on the ballot the GOP actually opposes. Over in Phoenix, the campaign of Republican candidate Jeff Flake was caught making misleading and inaccurate robocalls misdirecting Democratic supporters of Richard Carmona to the wrong polling locations, often miles away. Those calls are now being looked at by the Department of Justice in Washington.

Democrat Mary Crecco of Scottsdale  said she “just freaked out” when she got the Flake robocall. “It was totally wrong, totally wrong, and I feel like it was done purposely,” she told a Phoenix TV station.

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KPNX’s ‘Watch Dogs’ launched a special investigation into misleading robocalls from the campaign of Jeff Flake misdirecting Phoenix-area Democrats to the wrong polling locations. (3 minutes)

So who avoids robocalls? Cell phone customers. Under FCC rules, robocalls to cell phones are not permitted without permission from the person being called. In Pennsylvania, one Verizon Wireless store manager reported brisk sales from customers in the last few weeks driven away from their landline by the avalanche of political messages and other telemarketers.

Some states have successfully controlled the onslaught with laws that do not allow recorded robocalls unless first introduced by a live operator asking for permission to play them. That dramatically raises the cost of robocalling, leading many groups back to traditional mailers or broadcast advertising, both only slightly less annoying.

“Four out of five calls this morning were political calls,” John Fox, Pottsville, told a Pennsylania newspaper Monday at Fairlane Village mall. “I told my wife not to answer the phone anymore.”

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 WSAW in Wausau has started giving out tips to call-weary Wisconsin voters who are fed up with a constant assault of robocalls on their home phones.  (2 minutes)

Hurricane Sandy’s destructive forces of wind and water, combined with extensive electrical outages has wreaked havoc with telecommunications services from Maine to Virginia, leaving some customers potentially without service for weeks.

The storm has flooded Verizon‘s central switching offices in New York City, did extensive damage to Sprint’s wireless network and infrastructure, has left large sections of upstate and downstate New York without cable service, and clocks ticking for wireless cell customers using cell sites currently running on battery backup power.

Some of the worst problems are affecting Verizon’s landline and FiOS networks after the company lost two critical switching centers in Manhattan to extensive flooding. That has contributed to significant problems for Verizon customers across Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island. Further afield, Verizon customers without service can blame power outages and fallen trees that took out overhead wiring. Together, Verizon customers are experiencing significant problems with landline, broadband, and FiOS TV and Internet services in some areas.

Many Verizon Wireless cell sites are operating on battery backup units which maintain service for only a limited time. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut customers report increasing difficulty maintaining cell service signals as those battery backup units start to fail. Verizon engineering crews can restore undamaged cell sites with backup generators once permitted into storm-ravaged areas.

One of the hardest hit wireless carriers

Cablevision‘s business largely depends on areas that took a direct hit from Hurricane Sandy. Cablevision repair crews are encountering extensive power outages and damaged overhead wiring brought down during the storm in Connecticut and Long Island. Its service area closer to New York City has been primarily affected by power outages. Comcast said it was still starting an assessment process and was not prepared to report on the current state of its network, which operates in cities north and south of the New York City metro area.

While Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley reports little damage to Time Warner Cable’s systems, many remain offline from power interruptions, and Time Warner’s Twitter feed for upstate New York reports isolated outages in Portland, Maine and across upstate New York, primarily due to power losses or damage to infrastructure.

Sprint appears to be the hardest hit wireless carrier with widespread service outages, interruptions and call completion issues throughout the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Maryland, North Virginia and New England. Some customers far away from the worst-hit areas report trouble making and receiving calls on Sprint’s network. Many cell sites are also damaged.

AT&T is assessing damage to its landline operations in Connecticut, where it is the dominant phone company. Many AT&T cell phone sites, like Verizon, are operating on battery backup in power outage areas until AT&T can bring generators online to maintain service.

T-Mobile and MetroPCS report damage and service outages to their cellular networks as well, mostly from power outages.

Lyndhurst, NJ

Even old style communications networks were not spared from Hurricane Sandy. The Northeast Radio Watch reports a large number of broadcasters across the region off the air as of this morning:

• Outside of WOR (710), most New York City area AM stations are off the air. WOR survived the storm with its recently built three tower site located just above the flood waters. Chief engineer Tom Ray told NERW the water is 10 feet deep at WOR’s transmitter site in the Meadowlands. Many AM stations in New York favor transmitter locations in now-ravaged Lyndhurst and the Meadowlands. The result: indefinite absence of all-news WINS (1010) (it’s now back up — thanks to an update from Scott Fybush), which is now being heard on WXRK (92.3). Also missing: WLIB (1190), WSNR (620), WMCA (570), WNYC (820), WPAT (930), WNYM (970), WADO (1280) and WWRV (1330). FM outlets favor much higher transmitter locations, usually atop large skyscrapers, that escaped flood damage.
• WABC continues to air the audio portion of its broadcast on WEPN-AM (1050) and FM (98.7) for the benefit of those without power. WCBS studios are currently powered “by candlelight.”
• The Jersey shore’s FM outlets are mostly silent. Atlantic City was among the hardest hit, and some stations may be off the air for some time while rebuilding.
• Connecticut stations are also off the air. Powerhouse WICC (600) in Bridgeport has transmitters on Long Island Sound — a poor choice to withstand Sandy. It is likely underwater. Also gone: WGCH (1490 Greenwich), WAXB (850 Ridgefield) and WSHU (1260 Westport) and WALK-FM (97.5 Patchogue).

Repair crews for all concerned will likely only start assessing damage later today, but many will have to wait for power crews to complete work — they have first priority. Those lucky enough to see service restoration once power returns will be in far better shape than others who could wait weeks to get their Internet, television and phone service back.

Correction: Original story included reference to studio power knocked out at WOR-TV. That should have said WOR-AM (radio). 

The newspaper industry’s version of an infomercial.

Does your local newspaper sell its journalistic credibility down the river with an annual “best of” contest asking readers to vote for their favorite companies the newspaper later uses to shamelessly pursue advertising deals for a “special supplement” announcing the results?

The Topeka Capital-Journal sure does, and they’ve transformed the seedy affair into an art form, complete with softball interviews for some of the winning companies.

Take AT&T, which somehow got voted Topeka’s best cell phone company. (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and TracFone also made their “list” — showing either the tiny number of cell phone competitors in Topeka or a desire not to leave anyone out.)

In a “special” to the Capital-Journal, ad sales guy “reporter” Phil Wilke managed to interview an AT&T spokesman… by e-mail. It was not a tough interview:

Pulitzer Prize material it is not.

Consumer Reports readers do not think as highly of AT&T, but then that magazine does not accept advertising from AT&T — Topeka’s newspaper does. (J.D. Power and Associates also put AT&T at the bottom in its own survey.)

I first got suspicious when Olive Garden, the Chef Boyardee of Italian restaurants, made the list for “best restaurant service,” “best Italian restaurant,” and [shudder] “most romantic restaurant.” There is either something very wrong in Topeka, or these results don’t mean a thing.

But they do mean a lot of advertising revenue for the Capital Journal, which can call every winner and implore them to take out a special ad “thanking readers” for placing trust in their establishment. Puff pieces like the AT&T interview found above do little  for the newspaper’s credibility and trust with readers, however.

Surprisingly there was no category for Topeka’s best news source, but we did finally locate one where a nomination for the Topeka newspaper was appropriate: “BEST PLACE TO PLAY SOFTBALL.”

AT&T is being fingered as the party responsible for rendering Oakland’s $18 million dollar P25 digital public safety radio communications system unreliable, because police and fire radios are often inoperable near the company’s cell towers.

After more than a year of repeated failures and complaints from Oakland police over garbled communications, dead spots, and reception problems, investigators dispatched from the Federal Communications Commission finally identified the source of most of the problems: AT&T.

“If the officer is in an area close to one of their cell sites, essentially the cell site overpowers their radios,” said David Cruise, Oakland’s public safety systems adviser.

The system, built by Harris Corporation of Melbourne, Fla. is suspected of being intolerant of strong cell signals operating on nearby frequencies. The digital nature of the system means degraded communications often go unheard, and firefighters and police officers have complained loudly and repeatedly they have been unable to summon dispatchers while experiencing interference problems. The investigation found the problems are worst within a quarter to a half-mile from one of AT&T’s many cell sites.

The source of the interference is AT&T’s 2G network, operated on 850MHz. Oakland’s public safety P25 system operates on multiple frequencies nearby from 851-854MHz.

Under federal law, public safety communications have priority over cell phone service, and AT&T has cooperated by shutting down 2G service on 850MHz on at least 16 cell towers, immediately reducing complaints from police officers and firefighters.

“AT&T would never do anything to jeopardize law enforcement,” AT&T spokesman John Britton told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This spectrum has been out there since the 1990s. Thursday or Friday was the first time we were notified by Oakland. We reacted quickly.”

AT&T won’t say exactly how many cell sites are located in Oakland, but there are more than 1,000 AT&T-owned towers across the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Oakland officials plan to press AT&T to shut down more 2G data service on 850MHz until a solution can be found.

AT&T says only customers with the oldest phones are likely to notice the network shutdowns, because most current customers use 3G or 4G data service, which has not posed an interference problem. AT&T says it still maintains 2G service in San Francisco on 1900MHz, which should be accessible to customers with older phones, although the service may not operate as well on the higher frequency band when obstructions are present between a cell phone user and the nearest cell tower.

Representatives for law enforcement personnel hope the city is on the right track, but point out the Harris-built digital radio system has been nothing but trouble since it was first activated. The system has suffered repeated glitches, does not work inside hundreds of area buildings, and failed the night President Obama visited Oakland in July. Some critics note the Harris system does not even provide reception in the basement of Oakland’s police headquarters.

City officials are also investigating other contributing potential sources of interference, including T-Mobile, which also operates on similar frequencies in the area.

Ironically, the interference problem may have begun after Sprint Nextel committed to spending over a billion dollars to cover the costs of relocating public safety communications further away from its own cellular frequencies. Sprint Nextel paid $10.5 million to move Oakland’s radio system to a frequency further from its own network, but as it turns out, closer to AT&T’s.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCBS San Francisco Oakland Police Radios Failed During Presidents Visit 7-26-12.mp4[/flv]

KCBS in San Francisco has been pursuing the dilemma of Oakland’s public safety communications system for months. Back in July, police were alarmed when the radio system failed the night President Obama arrived in town.  (3 minutes)

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Oakland police are fed up with the year-old $18 million dollar emergency radio system that they say simply does not work. KCBS investigates in this mid-August report.  (4 minutes)

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Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission finally identified a major source of Oakland’s radio problems: AT&T cell sites.  (2 minutes)

“If you are a voice copper customer and you call in [with] trouble on your line, when we go out to repair that we are actually moving you to the FiOS product. We are not repairing the copper anymore.” — Fran Shammo, Verizon’s executive vice-president and chief financial officer

Verizon has declared the end of the copper wire phone line, at least in areas where the company’s companion fiber optic network FiOS is available. Fran Shammo, chief financial officer of Verizon Communications spoke about the death of the copper-based landline and the company’s strategic plans for its wired and wireless networks in the coming quarter at Oppenheimer’s 15th Annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference last Wednesday.

Verizon’s quiet and involuntary switch-out to fiber service is part of the company’s grander marketing effort to push customers towards upgrading service.

“The benefit we are getting […]  if you are a voice customer and we move you to [fiber] we now can upsell you to the Internet,” Shammo explained. “If you come over as a voice and DSL customer and we move you to FiOS, you now are a candidate for the video product. So there is an upsell which is definitely a benefit to this.”

Verizon earlier announced it would no longer sell standalone DSL service to customers, and has stopped selling copper-based DSL products in areas where Verizon FiOS is available. It even discourages customers from considering standalone FiOS broadband, with a budget-busting price of $64.99 for stand-alone 15/5Mbps service with a two-year contract or $69.99 on a month-to-month basis. Verizon offers considerably better value when customers sign up for multiple FiOS services.

Scrap heap

Verizon says the reliability of fiber makes maintaining older copper wire networks pointless.

“The bigger benefit is we are transforming the cost structure of our copper business because the copper fails two to three times more than fiber, which means we have two to three more times we have a tech and a truck rolling out to that copper connection. So we are eliminating that,” Frammo said.

Frammo added decreasing repair and maintenance expenses will help improve profit margins for the company.

Both CEO Lowell McAdam and Frammo have made profit margins a much higher priority for Verizon Communications than ever before.

“If you look at the [landline] side of the business, […] we have made a shift that said we are going to focus more on the profitability of FiOS this year. And that is important for us to do, because we need to generate the cash flow so that we can reinvest in those platforms,” Frammo said. “But I think as an industry as a whole you are seeing a different focus now, that it is more on returns, it is more on profitability. Can that continue? Sure. Obviously, you might have your blips here and there based on how fast something grows in one quarter versus another, but if you look at Verizon Wireless and you look at Verizon we are expanding our margins.”

Frammo addressed several key plans Verizon has for both its wired and wireless businesses, and what political priorities the company has for the rest of the year:

Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE Network is a Platform for Profits

Shammo told investors Verizon’s 4G LTE platform is now available to 76 percent of its customers in 337 markets. LTE, Shammo said, delivers not only the speed customers want but reduced operating costs for the cell phone provider. But Shammo said that will not bring reduced prices for customers — Verizon intends to use its LTE network as a platform for increasing profitability.

“When you take that network and you overlay our shared plan with that and now others are following with that shared plan, the entire industry from a shared perspective has a lot of room for growth because when you think about that network and the speed it provides, and then you take all these devices and you think about the number of tablets that have been sold in the United States that are not connected to a wireless network, you now enable people to connect those devices much easier.

“So when you think about that speed and that price plan that pools those data minutes, the growth profile here is really good for the industry and very, very good for Verizon Wireless because we think we have a strategic lead here.

“We are going to have to wait to see what the usage profile of this is. But can we expand our data, our data pricing? Of course we can, so you just add in more tiers. But that is part of where we think the future is going because when you think about the speeds and the video capability of LTE we do project out that that usage is going to continue to substantially increase which then folks will buy up.

“So it is going to be very, very easy for people to attach devices to just go beyond what we know today as a smartphone, a dongle, or a tablet. Now take it to your car, now take it inside your home for remote medical monitoring or whatever else that can happen in that house. Those can also now be attached to that price plan and everything can run off of that network.”

Frammo also hinted Verizon Wireless may be prepared to bring back an old concept from the days of long distance dialing — peak and off-peak data usage rates. Use Verizon’s network during peak usage periods and the company could charge a premium. But its LTE 4G platform also allows it to offer reduced rates when the network is being used less.

Shammo

Killing Off Your Phone Subsidy One Dollar at a Time

Shammo said Verizon Wireless is moving forward (along with other carriers) to gradually reduce equipment subsidies customers get when they upgrade their phones at contract renewal time. Verizon earlier discontinued customer loyalty discounts like its “New Every Two” plan and has stopped offering early upgrade incentives. Now the company is eliminating subsidies for some customers altogether and won’t offer them on several different types of devices.

“The industry has done a lot around trying to reform the upgrade policies and implement upgrade fees to try to strengthen the financial capability of that subsidy on a smartphone,” Shammo said. “We have also taken the track of not subsidizing tablets, less subsidy on dongles. It really is now all around the attachment of those devices into those price plans.”

Shammo added as competitors reduce subsidies, Verizon can continue to bring them down further over time. Shammo said that will improve the company’s margins.

Verizon Prepaid vs. Contract (Postpaid) Customers: “The religious belief is you can’t do anything that is going to deteriorate the postpaid base.”

Despite the company’s improved margins and declining costs from its 4G LTE platform, Frammo said Verizon has no plans to reduce prepaid pricing, because it could erode revenue from customers on two year contracts who might consider switching to a no-contract, prepaid plan.

“Obviously we are a postpaid carrier so anything we do — the religious belief is you can’t do anything that is going to deteriorate the postpaid base,” Frammo said. “I think people are willing to pay a slight premium to get on [Verizon’s] most reliable network and what we are finding is people are coming to that network. I think at this point we are very, very satisfied with where the prepaid market is. We are a premium to that prepaid market and, based on our growth trajectory right now, we are very comfortable with that price point.”

Verizon’s Political Priority for 2012: Where is our corporate tax cut?

While Shammo would not answer a question about which presidential candidate he feels would best serve Verizon’s interests if elected, Shammo made it clear the company is terrified of a so-called “tax cliff” — the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and a capital gains tax increase that would raise taxes on the wealthiest corporations from the current 15 percent to up to 25 percent — still lower than the tax rate paid by many middle class workers.

“Whoever is elected needs to deal with that tax cliff because that tax cliff could be detrimental to the economic performance of the U.S.,” Shammo said. “Then on a longer-term we definitely need corporate tax reform in the United States. We are not competitive with the rest of the world and I think everyone understands that. That is going to be harder to achieve, but I think that Washington understands that there needs to be some change within the corporate tax structure.”