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?

[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.

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.

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...

[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.