The AARP was surprised to learn Idaho was considering loosening the rules imposed on the state’s phone companies to complete repairs on out of service landlines within 24 hours. The organization, which represents the elderly, says the new rules are a serious threat to older Idahoans who are the least likely to have a cell phone and require landlines in case of an emergency.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission is considering relaxing regulations governing service outages at the behest of CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, two of the state’s largest phone companies. Both phone companies argue that consumers have cell phone alternatives and do not need rapid repair of landline service. The companies also do not want to face penalties from regulators over incomplete or delayed repairs to out of service landlines.

CenturyLink claims the declining number of landline customers justifies the reduced regulations on the state’s phone companies.

But the AARP argued otherwise in opposing comments filed last week:

• Give telephone companies twice as long to repair outages (from 24 hours to 48 hours), and even more time if they occur over the weekend.  Opposing the change, AARP reminds the PUC of the importance of landlines to the elderly, and the fact that home and health emergencies also occur over the weekend.
• Remove any penalties to telephone companies for not restoring service within the allotted period of time.  Currently if service is not restored within the repair interval, customers can receive a one month service credit.  AARP says removing the penalty leaves little incentive for timely repairs and erodes consumer protections.
• Lower benchmark for fixing outages. Currently, at least 90% of service outage reports must be fixed, the proposed changes would lower that to 80%.  AARP says the lower benchmark could mean more consumers going without crucial service for a longer period of time.

Other claims made by CenturyLink – such as the assertion that its ability to deploy broadband suffers because its personnel are unreasonably diverted to repair work – are unproven and largely irrelevant to its obligation to maintain reliable telephone services, says AARP.

The elderly advocacy group argues the little known case is one more example of the need for Idaho to establish a Utility Consumer Advocate Office to ensure residential consumers are represented in complex regulatory matters.  Idaho is the only state in the West without such an office and one of a handful nationwide.

Pendleton County, W.V.

Pendleton County, W.V. residents are frustrated by another landline service outage afflicting Frontier Communications in the eastern panhandle region of the state.

The latest disruption began early Friday morning, leaving limited phone service throughout the county, with customers unable to dial any number that was not within the local 249 exchange.

Customers found cell phone service spotty, as it traditionally always is in the county, leaving some with no way to communicate and frayed nerves.

WHSV-TV reports Rosa Propst was extremely upset by the outage which dragged on for nearly two days. Propst’s father was hospitalized in another county and medical personnel could not reach her to report her father’s deteriorating medical condition.

Her ill father was also upset because he could not reach his daughter — or just about anyone else in Pendleton County over the weekend.

“I would have held Frontier responsible for not giving us an emergency services line where we could get to a hospital or call the hospital,” Propst told the station.

Frontier eventually found the problem — a series of fiber cuts over the length of 1,000 feet of cable. A Frontier spokesperson said the company had to replace about 7,000 feet of cable and had to find workers willing to climb 40 foot telephone poles in what was characterized as a rugged area.

Customers complained this was not the first significant outage for Frontier customers in the area.

The company eventually repaired service early Sunday morning.

Frontier has been accused of lacking network redundancy, letting phone companies bypass damaged lines by switching to backup infrastructure.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHSV Harrisonburg Customers in Pendleton County Frustrated Over Limited Phone Service 6-10-12.flv[/flv]

WHSV first reported the major service outage to viewers during the weekend local news, noting customers between Brandywine and Sugar Grove had lost landline service. (2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHSV Harrisonburg Family in Pendleton County Frustrated Over Phone Service 6-12-12.flv[/flv]

 In this second report, WHSV talks with the Propst family about the human impact extended service outages can have on customers.  (2 minutes)

AT&T is tracking some of their customers in a data mining experiment few know about.

AT&T is watching you.

America’s second largest cell phone company admitted Sunday it is quietly tracking the habits of customers using their AT&T cell phones to learn what they do with their time, where they work and play, how long they spend in traffic, what pubs they visit, and how long they stay.

The industry calls it “data mining,” and the treasure trove of information companies clandestinely collect about their customers could eventually become a major profit center when packaged and resold to third parties. AT&T researchers are experimenting with “big data,” according to a weekend report in the Star Ledger, sifting through vast amounts of location information customers unknowingly provide the phone company that could fetch a high price on the open market.

The newspaper reports AT&T Labs has been quietly following its customers in Morristown, N.J. in an experiment to prove its “big data” concept.

AT&T researchers mapped the movement of workers in and out of the city each day, following customers from their home to the office and beyond to favored nightspots such as bars and restaurants — all by tracking where customers’ cell phones were at different times of the week.

The result was a highly-detailed “snapshot” of daily life in Morristown. Plotted on a map, AT&T knows that workers commute from as far east as Queens, N.Y., and the city’s nightlife attracts people from northern New Jersey and Brooklyn.

Company researchers tracked customers as they moved from cell tower to cell tower as they traveled, and from that the company was able to predict patterns of behavior from local residents. For example, AT&T knows your commuting shortcuts, and can deduce (and share with urban planners) problem intersections or likely workarounds residents will typically use when traffic snarls.

Such sophisticated tracking alarms privacy advocates despite company claims personally identifiable information is scrubbed before accessed by third parties. AT&T customers are automatically opted-in for data mining when they sign up for AT&T cell service. It is included in the company’s terms of service, AT&T says.

The Morristown project was considered experimental, but AT&T has high hopes it can eventually use its “big data” concept to create a new source of revenue for the company.

AT&T is not alone using tracking capabilities to monitor its customers. Verizon is not far behind, the newspaper reports. Google itself tracks smartphone owners to help spot traffic jams for the company’s “live traffic” maps.

Privacy advocates question how informed customers are about location tracking and data mining, and what companies can ultimately do with the data.

Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization specializing in free speech, privacy and consumer rights, told the newspaper consumers have a right to be concerned.

“One of the things you learn in kindergarten is that if you want to play with somebody else’s toys, you ask them,” Tien said. “What is distressing, and I think sad, about the big data appetite is so often it is essentially saying, ‘Hey, we don’t have to ask.’ ”

While cell phone companies tell you the only fair way to price wireless data is to charge you for what you use, these same companies are now considering how to reverse that argument and force you to buy more expensive “unlimited voice calling” plans you may not want or need.

The Wall Street Journal reports that AT&T is the most vocal proponent of ditching “tiered minute plans” for voice calls, which let consumers pick cheaper plans with fewer calling minutes. With Americans talking less and less on their cell phones, customers have been downgrading voice plans to less expensive options.

Industry trade group CTIA-The Wireless Association notes the average cell phone call dropped from 3.03 minutes in 2006 to just 1.78 minutes in 2011. Customers who rely entirely on their cell phone and no longer have a landline used to talk an average of 826 minutes per month in 2007.  Last year, that number dropped to 681 minutes, according to CTIA.

Verizon Wireless sells customers 900 minutes for $59.99. But the company does not count minutes used during nights and weekends or when placing/receiving calls to or from other Verizon Wireless phones. If a customer now talking less still pays $60 for a 900 minute plan, they could shave $20 a month off their monthly bill if they kept their daytime calling to 450 minutes a month. Many do. In fact, younger customers use their smartphones for talking even less, with some not even reaching one hour of voice calling a month.

Verizon's cattle call? Will the company herd all of its wireless customers to unlimited voice calling at a higher price?

Given the option to downgrade, customers are jumping at the chance. With voice revenue declining 2-4% in the first quarter, Wall Street has been pressuring carriers to act.

The answer that works for them, although probably not for you, is forcing all customers to purchase an unlimited voice calling plan at contract renewal time. At today’s prices, that could add an extra $30 a month for customers used to paying $40 for a basic 450-minute calling plan.

“The industry’s definitely moving towards unlimited,” AT&T Mobility Chief Executive Ralph de la Vega said in a recent interview. “Especially as more people adopt smartphones that have voice capabilities over the Internet, segmented voice plans will become less relevant.”

Ironically, cell phone companies that have spent the last year or two defending the end of unlimited mobile data as “fair” because customers can “choose exactly the plan they need,” are adopting a completely different strategy to push for unlimited voice calling.

“It’s more important to offer a complete solution to consumers which is really, truly unlimited,” said T-Mobile USA Chief Executive Philipp Humm in a recent interview. “The new world is a completely unlimited, worry-free world.”

Sprint agrees, although its insistence on preserving an unlimited data experience for its customers protects the company from charges of hypocrisy.

Fared Adib, head of product development for Sprint, told the Journal eliminating tiered voice options makes sense because it simplifies choices for customers. “People like the freedom of not having to worry about either data or voice,” he said.

No cell phone company would go on the record as the first to discard tiered voice plans, but AT&T led the way to ending unlimited data, and the company is increasingly vocal about ending tiered voice calling as well.

At current prices, consumers could pay substantially higher cell phone bills as a result.

Both AT&T and Verizon Wireless currently charge $70 a month for unlimited calling. Sprint charges $99.99 for its combined unlimited calling and data plan. T-Mobile charges $60 for unlimited talking and texting. Compelling customers to adopt unlimited calling plans will likely bring smartphone monthly charges well above $100 a month when factoring mandatory data plan add-ons, taxes, surcharges, and fees.

Customers who find this pricing intolerable will likely gravitate to prepaid calling plans, which is where an increasing number of occasional and light cell phone users have already ended up.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSJ Voice Calling Plan Changes 6-5-12.flv[/flv]

The Wall Street Journal explores why cell phone companies want to compel customers to choose unlimited voice calling plans.  (4 minutes)

The arrival of the LTE/4G wireless standard in the United States, and its adoption by the country’s two largest super-carriers AT&T and Verizon was supposed to open the door for true equipment interoperability, allowing customers to take devices purchased from one carrier to another. In the past, incompatible network standards (GSM – AT&T and CDMA – Verizon Wireless) made device portability a practical impossibility. The arrival of LTE could have changed everything, with device manufacturers using chipsets that would allow an iPad owner to switch from Verizon to AT&T without having to purchase a brand new tablet.

A new lawsuit filed by a small regional cell phone company alleges AT&T conspired to create their own wireless fiefdom that would not only discourage their own customers from considering a switch to a new carrier, but also locked out smaller competitors from getting roaming access.

C-Spire, formerly Cellular South, filed suit in U.S. federal court accusing AT&T and two of their biggest equipment vendors — Qualcomm and Motorola, of conspiring to keep the southern U.S. carrier from selling the newest and hottest devices and hampering their planned upgrade to LTE. The company also accuses AT&T of blocking access to roaming service for the benefit of C-Spire customers traveling outside of the company’s limited coverage area.

According to the lawsuit, the interoperability benefits of LTE have been artificially blocked by some of America’s largest carriers that force consumers to only use devices specifically approved for a single company’s network.

Divide Your Frequencies to Conquer and Hold Market Share

The Federal Communications Commission licenses wireless phone companies to use specific frequencies for phone calls and data communications. An industry standard group, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), is largely responsible for defining the standards of operation for wireless technology networks like LTE. In the United States, the group is dominated by the two largest cell phone companies and the technology vendors that make their living selling chipsets and phones to those major carriers.

Smaller carriers specifically bought spectrum near frequencies used by larger companies AT&T and Verizon with the plan to sign roaming agreements with them. But now Verizon is selling off its "Lower A, B and C" spectrum and intends to focus its LTE network on Upper C "Band 13," which it occupies almost exclusively. Meanwhile, AT&T has carved out its own exclusive "Band 17" for its Lower B and C frequencies where it will be able to effectively lock out other carriers. (Cellular South is now known as C-Spire).

It is 3GPP that elected to organize wireless spectrum into a series of frequency “blocks” and “bands” that different companies utilize to reach customers. Verizon Wireless, for example, has its 4G LTE network on a large chunk of the 700MHz band known as the “Upper C-block” or “Band 13.” Verizon earlier won control of some frequencies on the lower “A and B blocks,” which gave smaller companies the confidence to invest in adjacent frequencies, believing they would be able to negotiate roaming deals with Verizon.

Verizon has since elected to mass its 4G LTE operations on its “Upper C block,” and is selling off its lower “A and B block” frequencies. That leaves Verizon with overwhelming control of “Band 13.” The companies manufacturing equipment sold by Verizon are manufacturing phones that only work on Verizon’s frequencies, not those used by Verizon’s competitors. This effectively stops a Verizon customer from taking their device (and their business) to a competitor’s network.

This limitation comes not from the LTE network technology standard, but from the wireless companies themselves and equipment manufacturers who design phones to their specifications.

It would be like buying a television set from your local NBC station and discovering that was the only station the set could receive.

Verizon effectively created its own wireless “gated community” comprised of itself and a single tiny competitor still sharing a small portion of “Band 13.” AT&T was stuck in a considerably more crowded neighborhood, sharing space with more than a dozen smaller players, some who have a clear interest in being there to coordinate roaming agreements with AT&T to extend their coverage.

Regional cell phone companies could not exist without a roaming agreement that lets customers maintain coverage outside of their home service area. Without it, customers would gravitate to larger companies who do provide that coverage.

But large companies like AT&T and Verizon also have a vested interest not selling access to the crown jewels of their network, giving up a competitive advantage.

AT&T noticed its larger competitor Verizon Wireless had effectively segregated its operations onto its own band, and if that worked for them, why can’t AT&T have its own band, too?

Using a controversial argument that AT&T needed protection from potential interference coming from television signals operating on UHF Channel 51, located near the “A Block,” AT&T managed to convince 3GPP to carve out brand new “Band 17” from pieces of “Band 12.” Coincidentally, “Band 17” happens to comprise frequencies controlled by AT&T.

C-Spire alleges AT&T has since asked manufacturers to create devices that only support “Band 17,” not the much larger “Band 12,” effectively locking out small regional phone companies from LTE roaming agreements and the latest phones and devices.

Not surprisingly, Qualcomm and Motorola, who depend on AT&T for a considerable amount of revenue, fully supported the wireless company’s plan to create a new band just for itself. C-Spire’s lawsuit claims the resulting anti-competitive conspiracy has now graduated to foot-dragging by those manufacturers, reluctant to release new phones and devices that support the greater “Band 12” on which C-Spire and other smaller carriers’ 4G LTE networks reside. That is particularly suspicious to C-Spire, which notes companies manufacturing devices supporting all of “Band 12” would have automatically worked with AT&T’s new “Band 17.” Instead, manufacturers chose to create equipment that only worked on AT&T’s frequencies.

C-Spire says both AT&T and Verizon have once again managed to lock customers to their individual networks, have created artificial barriers to block roaming agreements, and have pressured manufacturers to “go slow” on new phones and devices for smaller competitors.

Driving the Competition Out of Business

LTE: Required for future competition.

Smaller carriers have always been disadvantaged by manufacturers’ exclusive marketing agreements with AT&T and Verizon that bring the hottest new devices to one or the other, leaving smaller players with older technology or smartphones with fewer features. Even worse, both AT&T and Verizon have forced manufacturers to enforce proprietary standards that make it difficult for consumers to leave one company for another and take their phones with them. C-Spire and other regional companies have primarily managed to compete because they often sell service at lower prices. They have also survived because roaming agreements allow companies to sell functionally equivalent service to customers who do not always remain within the local coverage area.

But recent developments may soon make smaller competitors less viable than ever:

1. AT&T’s spectrum plans make it difficult for smaller companies to use their valuable 700MHz spectrum, the most robust available, for LTE 4G service. Instead, companies like C-Spire will have to use less advantageous higher frequencies at an added cost to remain competitive in their own local markets.
2. Equipment manufacturers, who answer to the billion-dollar contracts they have with both Verizon and AT&T, remain slow to release devices that work on smaller networks, leaving companies like C-Spire without attractive technology to sell to customers.
3. The ultimate refusal by AT&T and Verizon to allow LTE roaming or make it prohibitively expensive or technologically difficult to access could be the final blow. Why sign up for C-Spire if you can’t get 4G service outside of your home service area? C-Spire admits in its lawsuit it cannot survive if it cannot sign reasonable roaming agreements with AT&T or Verizon.

Cspire complaint filed against AT&T, Qualcomm and Motorola