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FCC Officially Launching Inquiry Into Wireless Competition

Aug 27, 2009, 11:04 AM by Eric M. Zeman

At today's meeting, the Federal Communications Commission decided to launch a formal inquiry into the wireless industry, its business practices, and how the large wireless network operators affect consumer choice. The FCC will specifically be looking at AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. The FCC had previously taken initial steps to see if further investigation was warranted. The FCC has yet to provide details on exactly what it will be investigating. The wireless industry has staunchly defended its practices, pointing out that consumers have a wide range of choices of network operators, handsets, and service plans.

Reuters »

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Comments

This forum is closed.

This forum is closed.

Radbard

Aug 27, 2009, 11:31 AM

IMHO the US wireless industry..

.. is very anti-consumer. Yes you have choices but look at the industry in europe. They all have totally open networks, they use inexpensive prepay plans for the most part, and since they're still in business they must be making profit. I understand that the US has several total cell technologies (cdma, gsm, wimax to name a few), but I don't like how it works. In europe the cell phone providers dont have all this propertiery crap like they do here. You have plenty of choice, if a company is crap you can simply get a new sim card and bam you're with them. This makes the companies fiercley competivive and imho the consumer wins. Here you are hosed, try moving your expensive equipment that you bought with no contract from carrier to carr...
(continues)

ccareatatt

They also sell handsets at full price. Do you believe America could handle that? I dont.

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knoxvegas75

good points. I agree an Open standard is the way to go and offer more choices for the consumer. The reason this is not the case here in the US is the diversity of technology and its incompatibility with each different technology. Once LTE rolls out...
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flip mode

Everything you said was right and I totally agree with it...there is no competition here, just a finely tuned synchronized greed engine maintained by the big 4.

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Cellenator

then move to Europe 😈

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williamx

Aug 28, 2009, 9:54 AM

Texting

Perhaps the cell phone companies here in the US could make text messaging free. Not necessarily picture or video sharing free, but just the simple act of being able to send or receive a text message.

One has to ask why in the past two years has the price of a text message gone from $0.10 to $0.15 up to $0.20 per message if you don't have a text message plan. Sure you can buy a text message bundle plan, but why should a user do so if they are already paying so much for their voice plan and data plan?

Just some food for thought.

60dollarcarcharger

what happened to the fact that if you want something you have to pay for it. It's simple economics. Don't expect something for free just because a lot of people use it.

You don't get free gas just because you bought the car.

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wild tiger

it's definitely an interseting thought. it's a little bit of a push for customer's to "just get a text plan already", and part, "well every body else is going it so why not us."

when it comes right down to it i believe if you use it you should pay ...
(continues)

knoxvegas75

Aug 27, 2009, 11:26 AM

Shoulld be Interesting to see how much control Julius Genachowski and Dems take.

This should bring long in depth reports and bureaucratic red tape to see if there are unfair industry practices that are adversely effecting the consumers in the market. They will look specifically into the 80% market share controlled by the Big four (VZW, ATT, Sprint and T-Mobile). This will be another test to see if the Obama administration will fix the issues or redo the entire way the industry works. We shall see how newly elected chairman Julius Genachowski decides to go.

Check out my blog as this story develops more.

http://ryanori.com/?p=58 »

ecycled

if the government ran a cell company, what would it be like?

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