What?
Okay, so I've read both Phone Scoops story as well as Yahoos, and what I'm getting from phone scoops story is it is ultimately up to the subscriber to upgrade their handsets to an E911 capable device. If that is so, why is the carrier being punished for their customers using the device they'd like? If the customer doesn't want to upgrade, they wont. If the carrier tried to make people upgrade their device to an E911 capable phone, I'm sure the customers would get upset. When I read Yahoos story though, it sounded more like the carriers hadn't updated the network itself to support E911. If that is the case, then the fine is understandable. I guess I'm just a little confused about what's really going on here...
The customers are the ones who need to upgrade the handsets.
E911 Service
AT&T Wireless already complies with the E911 rule.
However there is a problem with the E911 rule (I've read the ruling). While the FCC does control the airwaves (cell phones) they do not control local 911 districts. For a local 911 district to have E911 the voters have to pass a tax increase. If not then the dispatcher can't locate you exactly. They have to use triangulation. I live in a suburb of a large city. There are multiple 911 districts within this city, some have E911 and some don't (remember the tax increase). Some local 911 districts arn't under FCC, state, county or even city control.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the FCC regulates all terrestrial wireless and wired networks (but not non-terrestrial wireless such as satellite).
I think the idea behind this is to have 911 districts who have e911 to be able to use it, regardless...
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Why doesn't the FCC just threaten to cancel their licenses for spectrum? i guarantee every cell phone provider would be more than willing to give away any handset, and just about give you any plan you want, without contract problems.
My Motorola timeport is more capable of E911 than my brand new Krzr k1m. My timeport plugs into my car which can tell a dispatcher exactly where I am using the car's GPS system.
and ohhhh, better upgrade to a NEW phone and pay a lot of money for...
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Ironic?
After reading this I was sitting and thinking, "How is it that Sprint has gotten so far behind in the game for enabling E911 on their phones?" They were the first to start installing it on their phones back in 2001 using Qualcomm's Snap Track chipset. I believe it was a Samsung phone that they were boasting about after the FCC announced the mandate in October of the same year. They announced that they would have it covering all new phones by end of 2002. What the hell happened? There can't be that many phones out there that are more than five years old.
The in dawns on me. It was probably the incorporation of Nextel. The company who was officially the slowest at getting their handsets up to snuff to compete in the market. I mean, ...
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umm it said PROPSED it hasnt said it will levy... and the out to all of this is.. we offer the handsets we cannot make people buy them... but you are right nextel customers are some of the slower ones to change handsets... but heck the handsets that m...
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I think the smart move would be for Sprint to say "look, you have an old handset that is costing our network so we're gonna make it so it also costs you. You have until such and such a date to fix it or we'll increase your bill by 10%" which they can...
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poor management
not to smart IMO, probably would have cost them far less to just send out some cheap gps capable freebies to their customers.
I dunno - assuming Sprint's share of the $2.8m fine is $1m even, that's still a fair bit of cash to suddenly drop on customers. Even a 10th of a percent of their customer base is tens of thousands of users, and to just give them phones (which ...
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Keep in mind that Sprint also has a large business base of customers. And if they are part of the non-GPS crowd, they would be a hard sell to switch over. If I were running a business, I wouldn't buy new phones for my employees just because my contr...
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First off Verizon is bigger so don't blame the size of the customer base, but here is the main point.
By getting fined it solved nothing, they still have to get those customers switched, it is not going to cost them less today then it would have mo...
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sprint phones so good you dont gots to change em lot. sanyo last long time man. you know wat i mean. lg verizon last 7 month. i dont care wut nobody say sprint phone are more reliable