August 7, 2008

Nearly half of U.S. residents have stated that they would oppose the use of cell phones on flights – even if there wasn’t an issue of the cell phone use interfering with onboard communication systems.

August 5, 2008

Ikea will offer pay-as-you-go phones. But only to customers in Britain, says Business Week, who announced the Sweden based company’s decision
August 5, 2008

A report by the Associated Press reveals that members of Congress are grumbling about the danger and annoyance of cell phone usage on airplanes. In fact, they think cell phones should be banned on airplanes permanently.
August 1, 2008

Sprint is offering a new type of hardware which will boost cellular phone signals within your home or office. The new femtocell hardware is called the Airwave. Samsung makes them and, basically, they are like a small, localized cell phone tower.

Verizon Attempts To Reduce Termination Fees

According to a Reuters report on May 24, Verizon Wireless is trying to seal a deal with consumer groups and Federal Communications Commission to put at rest once and for all the vexed issue of termination fees charged to customers if they scrapped their contracts prior to normal expiry.

Consumers have always complained the termination rates are frighteningly exorbitant and effectively rule out any cancellation even if a consumer contemplates doing so. Service providers, on the other hand, maintained it was necessary to recover the subsidies on handsets and other discounts which consumers got upfront with most of the popular plans. Even if this logic was genuine it would mean these termination fees should progressively decline with time and ideally would be nil with the expiration of the contract. But a reality check proved otherwise. The termination charges surprisingly remained same or almost same throughout the contract period. With positions of concerned parties being so much divergent, a flurry of law suits was the only expected outcome, and it has indeed been so. The situation has become more complex with over 50 states having different statutes getting involved in this imbroglio.

Verizon took the first step of prorating termination fees so that it gets lesser and lesser as the contract near its expiry. News trickling in indicates AT&T will do so by Monday next while Sprint Nextel is also providing enough signals it would follow suit before the year ends. This should be pure music to the ears of numerous subscribers and would surely reduce the number of suits pending in law courts throughout the country.

Inclusion of Federal Communications Commission is also a giant step towards elimination of a plethora of state specific statutes which make the situation extremely murky. One can hope at long last there will be an unambiguous guideline which will be equally applicable to all corners of the country.

However, both sides have still a lot of ground to cover before any sort of compromise is reached and a public hearing by Federal Communications Commission is slated on June 12.

(May 27, 2008)

 

   
© 2008. WirelessGuide.org All Rights Reserved.