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Senators To Examine Exclusive Handset Deals
narramissic writes "Based on a request that a group of rural operators sent asking the FCC to examine the practice of handset exclusivity, four members of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet sent a letter to the FCC expressing their concern. Small operators, like U.S. Cellular argue (PDF) that 'exclusive handset contracts divide wireless customers into haves and have nots.' But nationwide operators, including Verizon, maintain (PDF) that 'in the absence of exclusivity agreements, wireless carriers would have less incentive to develop and promote innovative handsets.' The Commerce Committee expects to hold a hearing on the issue tomorrow."
The Senators in question are probably trolling for campaign contributions.
The suddenoutbreakofcommonsense is very interesting, but I'm not sure which way:
1. The handset sweetheart deals are creating haves and have nots and should stop.
2. Without the handset manufacturers having to bend over backwards to please the carriers, there might have been fewer, lower-cost, higher-quality handsets available.
When the handset makers can tell the carriers to take it or leave it, and when those handsets have features dictated by the consumers instead of the carriers (abysmal here in the US), and market competition irrespective of long-term contracts hits the handset pricing, then not only would that tag truly apply, but so would whatabreathoffreshairfinally.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
It made a great deal of sense to select one or two devices, get them to agree to an exclusive contract, which would include us paying to promote their devices, and get the product to market. I don't see this situation being any different. It helped both us as a network provider, and them as a device provider. I don't see this as a conspiracy to restrict trade, just common business sense.
And, on an unrelated note, could anyone tell me why the HTML "li" code now works erratically? Is there another code that just gives me a simple new paragraph?
What was once true, is no longer so
Instead of debating it in Senate (which exists solely for debates), why put it to Commerce Committee and why now?
The answer can b e got here. It says a former tech exec has joi ned the committee.
Which means he is trying to pre-empt any legislation by the Congress by putting it for consideration in the committee.
Which effectively kills any legislation and also protects the interests of telecoms.
Sneaky, disgusting and probably illegal.
But then the senate has a record of disgust. So nothing new here.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Maybe the cellular carrier in Canada could have used some of its profits from charging some of the highest prices in the western world [article is a bit dated, but still accurate] for wireless services to hire adequate engineering resources to help their networks function with new technology and allow interoperability. Instead of investing in resources to improve network speed and capacity, they abuse monopoly power to amass profits and engage in rent-seeking behaviour. I'm not blaming you personally, of course. But saying that a wireless company with significant government-granted monopoly power, grants, and tax cuts is locking in devices because making things work is too hard is a little disingenuous.
But you underestimate the challenges we faced after introduction (this was about 20 years ago). The collective genius of marketing predicted the number of subscribers as "X"; when it turned out to be "3X", every other division of the company was scrambling. There weren't enough people in customer service to handle all the complaints, so we got a reputation for lousy service. There weren't enough cell sites so the engineers were working 60 hours to provision and tune them. The billing system was from Cincinnati Bell, and they didn't give us source code. I was the technical liason from Marketing to these other departments. When the upper crust of Marketing decided we needed to add a new billing plan, they would send me down with the admonition "They'll try to give you some excuse about not having source code; it's just their way of stalling". So even though we were getting lots of customers, our costs with all the overtime, rush fees, etc., were very high. We had to rebate a lot of calls because they dropped part way through. And the sales people were allowed to give out "non revenue" lines to clients (read "friends"); when they finally audited that, they were astonished to find that we had given out over 20,000 non-rev lines in Ontario alone - that was about 1 in 8, IIRC. In that environment, trying to adapt to new equipment was, shall we say, problematic. I recall one occasion when I was trying to find the status of the integration of voice mail/paging system, the engineer in charge saw me in the switch room and literally ran away.
Still, it was a tremendous education in how not to run a business. I left after 18 months much wiser.
What was once true, is no longer so