Wireless Phone Carriers Held To (Texas) State Law

profet writes "The Dallas Court of Appeals found that wireless carriers must abide by state consumer protection and contract laws or face liability in state courts. A story on PR Newswire talks about AT&T's practice of 'misrepresenting' (read lying), and overbooking its network."

Comments

Said the AT&T spokesperson:

[Dimwit]

"You know, we're already providing a useful service to the citizens of Texas - it's not like we should have to obey the laws too!'

Seriously, though - weren't there some estimates that by 2010 major corporations would be in a position to blackmail the government to the point of having martial rights and extratorritarial soverignty?

Re:Said the AT&T spokesperson:

[Alsee]

For a minute there I thought you said corporations would want marital rights. Needless to say, I found it extremely confusing lol.

-

Overbooking?

[jsse]

I could understand the problem with 'misrepresenting', but all mobile carriers, as well as ISP, always overbooking user subscriptions to maximize the usage. How could they draw a line there?

Re:Overbooking?

[Profane Motherfucker]

Well, they said "you crossed the fucking line, assholes." That's how they drew the line. If you think the law is somehow magically logical and even-tempered, What the fuck, are you new here? The law is an ambigious fucking hodgepodge of shit faced nukkas who have wild interpretations of existing statue. Consistency is a fucking joke.

Re:Overbooking?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I doubt that they'll have to. If the case goes to court, the substantive question will probably have more to do with billing credit for dropped calls and misrepresentation of service levels than with oversubscription. There's nothing illegal about oversubscription, but it's illegal to deceive your customers about it. And not issuing credits over dropped calls when you said you would is definitely a big no-no.

Re:Overbooking?

[www.sorehands.com]

There are areas where Sprint has been overbooked. They first tell you, "it is radio, we can't guaranty signal." Then they tell you, "it must be your handset" and then have eventually have you replace the handset. Then, you finally found out that they know this is a problem because the network is oversold and it will get better when they put up more towers. And, then they only let you get credit for 20 calls a month.

But this is not an unexpected ruling where an airline was held to be liable and the case kept in state court where a flight attendant dropped a briefcase on a passenger's head. The court said that the this had nothing to do with the federally regulated area and not prempted by federal law.

Better watch out

[arcadum]

This is from the same state where a Texas man , his best freind.

Re:Better watch out

[Anonymous Coward]

i think you gotta learn HTML, and try again.

For Drinking his last beer,

[arcadum]

His last beer?

Not possible to monitor over-booking

[Vendekkai]

How on earth would anyone decide if a telco was "over-booking" or not? If a telco had to provide everyone the ability to make a call when they chose, it would be the equivalent of providing every subscriber a leased line.

How carriers generally plan networks is that they take a Grade of Service of 2% or so. This means that 2% of the times someone attempts a call, the call won't be completed. Unless AT&T has drastically reduced the grade of service, there shouldn't be a perceptible difference between them and any other carrier.

Dimensioning a network is fairly complex. Carriers first assume an average Call Holding Time (90 seconds or thereabouts) and the average number of calls per day per subscriber (say 3). From this, they derive the total Erlang (one erlang is one channel used for one hour) required over an average 10 hour day, and dimension that as the peak loading on the network.

Of course, the actual dimensioning is considerably more complex. However, I doubt very much if any carrier would commit to a grade of service that they cannot meet.

Re:Not possible to monitor over-booking

[dirtmerchant]

you've never worked for at&t or one of its indentured servent out-source pits o' hell (but ask me how i really feel about them sometime).

like most major corporations, at&t outsources the majority of its customer service and tech support jobs to (in their words) concentrate on the core business, but which actually translates into "pay the shlubs slave wages whilst we quietly destroy the company through shotty business practices and poor management.

I'm an AT&T customer...

[TheSHAD0W]

And I've very rarely found the system to be unavailable. Someone else mentioned a "2%" maximum unavailability rate; I'd have to say fewer than 1% of my calls weren't able to go through. 'Course, this is only in my little corner of the state; YMMV.

This is for AT&T's wireless service. Long distance, now that's another story... I had to drop them for another company after they bumped me to a higher rate...

Re:I'm an AT&T customer...

[Hungus]

As am I and let me say that i have found the oppisite. Routinely i get the message "unable to place call" .. In fact looking at my logs I get it about 4 times a day and place about 20 calls a day from my wireless phone here in the dallas area, so that is about a 17% failure rate for me.

Re:I'm an AT&T customer...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Someone else mentioned a "2%" maximum unavailability rate; I'd have to say fewer than 1% of my calls weren't able to go through. 'Course, this is only in my little corner of the state; YMMV.

It varies wildly depending on where you are when you're trying to place a call. The question isn't really whether the network is oversubscribed; the question is whether any given cell tower is oversubscribed at any given instant.

Try making a cell phone call at 5:30 pm in a major urban area. Chances are fair or better that your call won't go through the first time you dial, because the tower won't be able to handle it.

Even worse...

[TheSHAD0W]

There was that one Texas town where someone went and castrated the mayor...

It aint the state, it's the telcos

[TheHawke]

Case in point: The Rockport Tx market for then Southwestern Bell (now Cingular) had the town in their back pocket for their analog service. 3 years ago Verizon came in and put a tower up in nearby Aransas Pass and issued a mandate ordering SWBell to reduce their output in the Analog service. Since then service went to hell and then some. NOW comes along the name change to Cingular Wireless, only it just gets worse. Their buyout of several cellular systems inspire management to attempt to MERGE the databases without proper testing. That knocked out over 65% of the digital service for the Rockport market. Their claim is that the phones were defective.. Bullshit! There were people coming in from other Cingular regions and their phones were not able to ringout, but able to receive calls! So you tell me what happened here... Heh! The store I worked for became a former Cingular dealer and settled for selling Sprint PCS, in which did very well.

They already have that...

[A nonymous Coward]

... they do screw the consumer ... uuhhhh customer, right?

The same way ISPs do.

[dnoyeb]

Quit making excuses. If they had 1 customer, they would not have this problem. If they oversell they should realize it because they should be monitoring the drop rate and congestion. DUH!

And how can it be tested? The same way gas stations are tested for how much gas they offer. Have someone making calls and reporting the success of them. simple.

But its even simpler. supena the records of call droppage and congestion.

You seem to suggest its so complex we should just be happy with it. You should receive what you pay for, this stuff is not free you know.

TEST

[charlie763]

This is a test to see what the "No Score +1 Bonus" check box does.

Re:TEST

[charlie763]

I see that it sets my score to 1 rather than the normal 2 that I get. That shucked.

Re:TEST

[mph]

(Offtopic -1's for everyone!)

It does exactly what it says. Since you're a registered user, you start at score=1. Since you have good karma (or did, if the moderators notice us), you get a +1 bonus to 2. The checkbox gets rid of the +1 bonus.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[jumbie]

Taleban invite Texas to lunch

FUCKING BULLSHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

more anti-Amerian english lies

Re: whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate almost all americans, not just the few who can read english ;)

nah its true. can't post properly just now coz my karma is too low, but check this link out.

want to be friends?
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jumbie