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FCC Fines Verizon For Failing To Investigate Rural Phone Problems
WheezyJoe writes Verizon agreed to a $5 million settlement after admitting that it failed to investigate whether its rural customers were able to receive long distance and wireless phone calls. The settlement is related to the FCC's efforts to address what is known as the rural call completion problem. Over an eight-month period during 2013, low call answer rates in 39 rural areas should have triggered an investigation, the FCC said. The FCC asked Verizon what steps it took, and Verizon said in April 2014 that it investigated or fixed problems in 13 of the 39 areas, but did nothing in the other 26.
"Rural call completion problems have significant and immediate public interest ramifications," the FCC said in its order on the Verizon settlement today. "They cause rural businesses to lose customers, impede medical professionals from reaching patients in rural areas, cut families off from their relatives, and create the potential for dangerous delays in public safety communications." Verizon has been accused of letting its copper landline network decay while it shifts its focus to fiber and cellular service. The FCC is working a plan to protect customers as old copper networks are retired.
"Rural call completion problems have significant and immediate public interest ramifications," the FCC said in its order on the Verizon settlement today. "They cause rural businesses to lose customers, impede medical professionals from reaching patients in rural areas, cut families off from their relatives, and create the potential for dangerous delays in public safety communications." Verizon has been accused of letting its copper landline network decay while it shifts its focus to fiber and cellular service. The FCC is working a plan to protect customers as old copper networks are retired.
"Grandpa, what are those things called, again?"
Does Verizon feel that these fines obviate their responsibility to act? Is it cheaper to pay the fines than fix the problem?
So Verizon accepted a fine of $5,000,000. For Verizon, I call that a success. Given their size nothing at all is going to cost them less than 5 million. There is no way in hell that investigations into rural phone problems would have cost less.
This is just the cost of doing business, and it's certainly more profitable to break the law and pay the fine than it is to do what they are supposed to do.
Until the fines are set to a level to remove all profit and THEN put a punishment on top, large business will continue to flout the law because it's more profitable.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And to pay this fine, the execs have their coffee ladies sweep the corners of the executive lounge for dropped money...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
At my home, I'm about 9 miles from anywhere I can get cell reception. The simple truth is that Verizon doesn't care about investing in low population density areas, whether it's cellular or wired connectivity. Why would they? It costs the same to put up a tower in rural areas (neglecting real estate cost), and they recover far fewer customers to offset the cost. The bottom line: Deer don't use 4G. It leaves some of us out in the cold, but the business model makes sense.
The Universal Service Fee (i.e. Tax) that is on everyone's phone bill is supposed to cover the cost of doing this. Unfortunately, it has become just added profit as the phone companies (Verizon, AT&T, etc.) do not use it to subsidize rural phone service. If this was a Libertarian Paradise, you probably would pay $500 dollars a month for landline service while someone in a densely populated urban area would pay $5 a month. Cell phone service would have a greater disparity in price.
Apparently going through the FCC is the only way to get anyone to fix anything.
https://support.t-mobile.com/t...
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I live in an area that is serviced by AT&T (Southwestern Bell doing business as). This is a rural area in North Texas near Fort Worth that has smaller holdings counted in acres or tens of acres and not generally hundreds of acres. This location is maybe 12 miles from the central office that services my land lines. Almost every time there are heavy rains or even ice or snow (remember, Texas) the phone lines go down. It takes nearly a week to get them repaired. But come the next weather event down they go. And cell phone service is not good. I can walk ten feet within my house and lose the connection with the cell tower.
AT&T expressed their disdain of Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) (analog telephone over copper pairs) about 4 years ago when they filed a request for rule making with the FCC to outlaw POTS. They compared POTS to analog television and used the reasoning that if the FCC could force the switch to digital television and relegate analog television to the garbage bin of history, the FCC could do the same for POTS. I believe it was discussed here on Slashdot. This must have been their marketing department because AT&T didn't realize the technical impact this could have in densely populated areas that have extremely high telephone usage such as skyscrapers with a few thousand people that were constantly on the phone for business. It may be that VOIP would negate the problem but they actually focused on cell phone usage.
The big telephone companies keep dreaming of having everything go over to cell or other services that have MUCH higher profit margins than POTS. If the biggies make the service bad enough they hope they can drive people off of it.
How much of this, though, is due to abusive practices like traffic pumping?
There were hearings and talk of reform. Did anything every happen?
Is it possible that the reasons that long-distance calls (in or out) don't complete because they've been too greedy abusively-routing 900-calls and the like through these areas?
Save/make $10 million.
Pay $5 million fine.
$5 million profit.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
"They cause rural businesses to lose customers"
This is the argument I don't hear enough about network neutrality. If everyone's one traffic isn't treated with some equality then we essentially let telco companies choose the winners and losers in a whole lot of businesses, not just Internet related businesses. If companies want monopoly protects they should be hit and hit hard when they refuse to treat rural or any other customers the same. Verizon shouldn't only be fined, the should lose their entire business in these areas.
Well, perhaps they will finally learn that Adam Smith was talking about trade between equals. When one side has a massive amount of power then trade stops becoming so free.