June 2011

A day after Verizon Wireless expanded its long-term evolution (LTE) footprint to 19 new markets, T-Mobile has countered by bringing its dual-carrier high-speed packet access plus (HSPA+) upgrade to another 41 cities. That brings T-Mobile’s total footprint for the lightning fast 42 Mb/s to 97 markets compared to Verizon’s 74.

Though all of the operators offer so-called 4G services, Verizon and T-Mobile’s networks stand out, not just because of the cutting edge technologies used but the enormous bandwidth they've devoted to those networks. Both are using 20 MHz of spectrum in their mobile broadband carriers compared to the 10 MHz used by Sprint for WiMAX and AT&T for HSPA+, allowing them to deliver speeds well in excess of 10 Mb/s consistently. Verizon’s next-generation LTE technology is technically the faster, though it conservatively markets its average speeds as between 5 Mb/s to 12 Mb/s. Meanwhile, T-Mobile today reported that it is recording average speeds just under 10 Mb/s and peak speeds of 27 Mb/s to the Rocket 3.0 laptop stick, its sole dual-carrier device. Neither T-Mobile nor Verizon are reporting total pops covered for their networks so it’s hard to gauge which has the larger footprint. But in general Verizon has been much more aggressive in launching in the biggest metro markets, while T-Mobile has launched in a more than a dozen major metros and focused most its expansion in mid-sized and small markets. Both carriers’ year-end coverage projections reflect though those trends. Verizon is targeting 185 million pops while T-Mobile is targeting 150 million.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed a total of $11.7 million in penalties against four companies that appear to have unlawfully billed tens of thousands of consumers for unauthorized charges –- a practice known as “cramming.”

The proposed penalties were issued against Main Street Telephone ($4,200,000); VoiceNet Telephone, LLC ($3,000,000); Cheap2Dial Telephone, LLC ($3,000,000); and Norristown Telephone, LLC ($1,500,000). The FCC issued Notices of Apparent Liability to each of the four companies for apparently charging thousands of customers for “dial-around” long distance service that they had not ordered. The Enforcement Bureau’s investigation revealed that only a tiny fraction of the affected consumers (about one-tenth of one percent) actually used the services for which they were charged. Nevertheless, the apparently unlawful billing continued for months and sometimes years. “Cramming” occurs when a company places charges on a consumer’s phone bill without authorization. These mystery fees typically range from $1.99 to as much as $19.99 per month. They are often buried in multi-page phone bills and have misleading labels that make it difficult for a consumer to detect them. The FCC has found that cramming is an “unjust and unreasonable” practice that violates section 201(b) of the Communications Act.

FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Michele Ellison stated: “Cramming attacks consumers in the pocketbook, where it really hurts. The Enforcement Bureau takes today’s actions to protect thousands of consumers who appear to have been hoodwinked into paying for services they never wanted, ordered, or used.”

The FCC also released an Enforcement Advisory on cramming, emphasizing that all charges placed on phone bills must be authorized by the customer, and warning that the FCC will take aggressive enforcement action in this area.

Think of all the ways our personal data is collected: through tablets and smartphones and apps and email clients and browsers and myriad web services. The problem has become so fraught that few pretend to have an answer for all of the issue's complexities. A recent interview with Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, underscored this idea. Baker has been a crusader for user privacy, having been involved with the issue for years. "I'm smack in the middle of all of this," she says. But she will be the first to admit that not even the tech-savvy folks at Firefox have all the answers. So not only do we not know what a privacy tool might look like in the future, or whether one could even be created to control the swamp of personal data online, but by the time one could come to fruition, it's also unclear whether our greater society would even need or want it given our forever-changing views on privacy.
As for potential government regulation of online privacy, it represents yet another mystery.

Consumers are a needy bunch who want to feel cared for, and looked after, and who trust their wireless carriers even less than their insurance companies and banks. Such are the findings of a new study commissioned by Pitney Bowes Business Insight that questioned 1,000 U.S. and 1,000 UK residents. Trust, the study found, is critical to any enduring relationship, and consumers' commitments to their mobile carriers are no exception. Which means the industry needs more than a little work. Less than half of those surveyed said they felt satisfied with the "treatment, relationship and services" they receive from their mobile carrier. Only 40 percent said they trust their mobile provider's communications, a mere 24 percent said they believe their carrier is doing a good job of overseeing customer care and only 31 percent believed that, "if they shared their problems with a service provider"(presumably a problem related to their device or wireless service) "they would receive a caring response." A spurned mobile customer, it turns out, is slow to let go of their heartbreak.