Mobile Phone Robo-Call Bill Killed After Outcry

Score one for consumers. The proposed legislation that would enable robo-callers to make unsolicited phone calls to cell phones was killed when its sponsors informed Congressional leaders not to advance the bill out of committee.

The bill sponsored by Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., (H.R. 3035) would have allowed “robo-calls” to your cell phone — even if you didn’t give a company permission to contact you at that number.

Consumer groups made a lot of noise in the hope that Congress would kill the bill. They call it a dangerous proposal that could lead to more nuisance calls.

Supporters of the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Air Transport Association, as well as groups that represent bankers, mortgage lenders, college loan programs and debt collectors.

On Wednesday, Terry and bill co-sponsor Rep. Ed Towns, D-N.Y., sent a letter to the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee asking that the legislation not be advanced.

Last week, attorneys general in 48 of the 50 states sent their own letter to Congress opposing the legislation.

This bill would have been costly to consumers as they would have incurred additional charges as a result of the unsolicited calls, and the proffered rationale for allowing such calls - to inform individuals of flight changes, drug and product recalls, etc., made little sense since consumers can already opt-in to allow the manufacturers or companies with whom they already do business to contact them via phone, email or text messages.

Good riddance to bad legislation.

Kill The Mobile Phone Robo-Call Bill (H.R. 3035)

Legislation was introduced in Congress that would allow businesses to robo-call cell phones with unsolicited advertising. Proponents claim that this is an important upgrade to phone technology and existing law:

If you like getting those automated messages on your home phone, then you’re just going to love a proposal in Congress. The bill (H.R. 3035) would allow these “robo-calls” to your cell phone — even if you didn’t give a company permission to contact you at that number.

Supporters of the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Air Transport Association, as well as groups that represent bankers, mortgage lenders, college loan programs and debt collectors.

In a letter to Congress, they claim H.R. 3035 is needed to “modernize” existing law by enacting “limited common-sense revisions to facilitate the delivery of time-sensitive consumer information to mobile devices, while continuing to protect wireless consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls.”

They say robo-calls to cell phones would be used to alert you to food and drug recalls, data breaches, flight delays and appointment cancellations.

Howard Waltzman, an attorney representing the business groups supporting H.R. 3035, says this “non-marketing commercial information” is important to people. He tells me the ability to make contact via a mobile phone is “critical” because so many people now use a wireless device as their primary or only means of phone communication.

That's quite a bit of misinformation packed into a few paragraphs. Right now, as a Delta customer, I can get notifications of flight delays or issues to my phone - and I can give them that information.

There's no reason that a company with whom I do no business should be able to call my cell phone unsolicited. Fact is that most people pay for airtime - both in minutes outgoing and incoming. If these businesses are able to make these unsolicited calls, people are going to see their minutes used up that much quicker because these robo-calls will quickly fill up the airtime and are a direct cost imposed on the cell phone owner. It would also adversely affect those who use prepaid wireless plans (the majority of which are lower income users).

That's absolutely inexcusable.

People can opt in to receive all kinds of product updates and warnings, including food and drug recalls. There's no reason to give companies the right to make unsolicited calls. However, some of these businesses are seeing their revenues drop as an increasing number of people and businesses eliminate their land-line service and switch to cell-phone carriers.

That's the real financial impetus for the change.

UPDATE:
Added a link to the MSNBC story. Also, here's a direct link to the text of the legislation.

The Big Draw

Forget about televisions, washing machines, dryers, or even refrigerators. The ubiquitous set-top boxes (standard, HD, or DVR) necessary to run cable/fiber television programming is turning into the top power draw in homes throughout the United States.

Even when turned off, they draw power far in excess what anyone could possibly imagine.

Over the course of a year, each boxes can draw more power than a 21 cubic foot refrigerator. When homes have multiple boxes, the numbers add up quickly.

There are 160 million so-called set-top boxes in the United States, one for every two people, and that number is rising. Many homes now have one or more basic cable boxes as well as add-on DVRs, or digital video recorders, which use 40 percent more power than the set-top box.

One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.

These set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use. The recent study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States — and that 66 percent of that power is wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. That is more power than the state of Maryland uses over 12 months.

“People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,” said John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission who is now with the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation. “Companies say it can’t be done or it’s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn’t cost much, if anything.”

Reducing the power consumption for these devices is critical to reducing power consumption and need for additional power. There's no reason that these devices should draw as much power as they are. The cable providers claim it is necessary to provide programming and updates without interruption, but this would appear to be a software issue and if the boxes are designed to improve efficiency, the power consumption issue could be solved.

After all, boxes in Europe draw a fraction of the power.

It's past time for the cable companies and providers to get on the ball and reduce power consumption for their devices.

AT&T Loses Exclusivity On Apple's iPhone; Gets Caught Goosing Network Figures

AT&T got hit with a double dose of bad news this week. First was the revelation that the telecommunications company went ahead and claimed that it had the nation's largest 4G network, but did so merely by renaming its existing 3G network. It didn't actually bring any facts to back up the change.

Marketing has won. Truth in advertising has lost.

4G speeds, real 4G, are specified as 100Mbit/sec for a mobile device moving at a fairly high rate of speed relative to the base station and 1Gbit/sec if stationary relative to the base station.

Current "4G" speeds by the carriers though is nowhere near this. It is, however, higher than what we are used to as 3G speeds for the last few years. I guess saying you had 3.1G would do no good because your competitor would just claim 3.2G and eventually everyone would be up around 3.9999G and, well, you might as well round to 4G, which they did.

AT&T is the latest to join the farce with its HSPA+ technology. Last year T-Mobile called their HSPA+ network 4G and AT&T gave T-Moble grief over it. Less than a year later, AT&T is on the HSPA+ 4G bandwagon.

What happens when LTE comes out on these networks? There is nothing to stop these guys from claiming it is 5G, even though it technically isn't even 4G.

The numbers become meaningless.

Then, there's the issue of those areas that supposedly have 4G service that are still inaccessible to many users because the networks themselves are not robust enough to manage the demand.

The networks are all playing games, but AT&T is just the latest to be called out for goosing its network figures in an attempt to increase market share and sales.

So why am I picking on AT&T? What makes AT&T's situation particularly galling, is that AT&T had just called out T-Mobile for doing the exact same thing just a few months ago. Verizon is also in the game, renaming its LTE architecture as 4G, but the ITU has let all these shenanigans continue because they've relaxed the definitions for 4G to the point that they're meaningless as a standard.

Now comes the long rumored possible word that Apple has finally inked a deal to sell and distribute the iPhone on Verizon Wireless, which has the largest and most accessible 3G network in the nation. Apple will have had to rework the iPhone to meet the different network architecture for Verizon (CMDA versus GSM as used on AT&T).

The companies are holding pressers on January 11, and it is widely expected that the companies will announce the iPhone coming to Verizon.

Adding Verizon would end Dallas-based AT&T Inc.’s four-year run as the exclusive U.S. carrier of Apple Inc.’s iPhone, a period in which the device has both been a top seller and faced complaints about reception. The move brings millions of potential customers to Apple and may crimp the growth of devices that run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system, Reiner said.

“By getting on to Verizon, Apple has the opportunity to sell more iPhones and could potentially slow Android’s momentum at the carrier that has been that platform’s most important patron,” Reiner said.

This past week, ComScore Inc. said Android topped the iPhone in U.S. smartphone subscribers for the first time, accounting for 26 percent of the market, compared with 25 percent for Apple. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. had the top spot with 33.5 percent.

Apple and Verizon are waiting for the technology industry’s focus to move away from the Consumer Electronics Show being held now in Las Vegas, said Rajesh Ghai, an analyst at ThinkEquity LLC in San Francisco.

Verizon's network is simply more robust and accessible than AT&T - and you don't have to take Verizon's (or my) word on that - Consumer Reports found that AT&T had the worst coverage, particularly in urban areas like New York and other major metropolitan areas. It simply couldn't keep up with the data usage of its customers and Verizon has built out a greater capacity.

Since Verizon will now be carrying the iPhone, expect a significant shift in users to Verizon since the one major factor in AT&T's growth over the past few years has been due to iPhone exclusivity.

I'd also expect to see many Verizon users who have been locked into Android (Google) or Blackberry operating system architectures to flock to Apple's iOS system and expect to see Droids lose market share to Apple. That would also likely result in additional price pressure to bring prices down on the smartphones.