CONSUMERS UNION RAISES CONCERNS ON BLOCKED 911 WIRELESS CALLS

CU urged carriers to provide uniform billing box that would allow subscribers more easily to compare calling plans, similar to interest rate data that credit card companies furnish. Calling plan details should be provided in “standard format with readable type,” group said. CU also said it would call on Congress this year to direct FCC to reinstate cellular carrier requirements involving service area coverage maps. CU Telecom & Internet Counsel Chris Murray also urged Commission to not “waffle” in giving additional extension to wireless carriers to meet current Nov. 24 mandate for deploying wireless local number portability. Murray said Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was expected to introduce bill shortly on wireless number portability. Schumer’s office had no immediate comment. “We would like to see handset portability in the longer term,” Murray said, noting that now subscribers can’t take their handsets with them when they switched service providers. “This would help to make the market more competitive by reducing switching costs.”

More broadly, Murray said “the biggest threat on the horizon is consolidation in the industry,” which could begin in next year or 2 if current capital crunch eased for carriers. He cited Wall St. Journal article Mon. that said FCC was leaning toward easing unbundled switching requirements for Bell carriers as part of Triennial UNE review. While cellphone industry provides competitive hope, sector doesn’t yet represent robust competition for Bell companies because of problems with dropped calls and 911 system, Murray said. Once wireless merger activity heats up, “we are concerned the Bell [backed] wireless companies such as Verizon Wireless and Cingular will start gobbling up more of their competitors and this leaves nobody with an incentive to compete with the core landline monopolies,” he said.

Guest said results of Consumer Reports’ in-house 911 test calls were “disturbing.” With cooperation of local emergency call centers in Steuben County, Ind., and Sullivan County, N.Y., CR ran tests of emergency calls to 911 centers last summer, said David Pittle, CU senior vp-technical policy. All digital handsets that were evaluated had capability to automatically switch over to analog mode. Phones were tested in situations in which home carrier’s signal was known to be weak but competing operator had usable signal strong enough to complete 911 call, Pittle said. “We wanted to know when the home carrier’s signal is too weak to make a connection to 911, will phones make use of a strong compatible signal?” he said. Overall, 9 of 21 calls failed to connect to 911 in tests, he said. “Failure to make the calls causes special concern because in every instance there was a strong, usable signal from a neighboring carrier,” Pittle said. Tests involved 18 phone-and-service provider combinations.

FCC in Feb. 2000 mandated that new analog wireless handsets and digital handsets when operating in analog mode be able to complete 911 calls to either analog carrier in area regardless of how handset was programmed for nonemergency calls. Those requirements didn’t cover new digital handsets, although some models now were programmed so that 911 call that couldn’t be completed on one digital network would be tried automatically on another digital system. “The FCC must update its wireless regulations, namely, by having their current rule apply to phones dialing 911 in digital mode,” Pittle said. CU also called on: (1) FCC to run own tests to determine whether handsets were operating as certified. (2) FCC to ensure digital phones were more compatible, particularly in light of analog network requirements that sunset in 2007. (3) Manufacturers and carriers to invest more in providing reprogramming so that handsets made better use of all available signals in emergency.

In CR survey of 11,500 subscribers to its Web site last fall, 1,880 said they had tried to make 911 calls using cellphone in previous 12 months. About 15% said they had trouble connecting, including 4% whose emergency calls weren’t connected at all. CR said contributing factors appeared to bad connections, weak signals or other problems. One-third of survey respondents said they were “seriously considering” switching wireless carriers, 14% said they had experienced dropped calls and 11% said their calls were beset by severe static or difficulty in hearing other caller. Verizon Wireless topped CR’s first rankings of cellphone carriers in Chicago, Dallas, L.A., N.Y., San Francisco and Washington, CR said.

CU’s Murray said group was “heartened” to see that FCC began testing analog phones for compliance with 911 calling requirements when confronted with information last month that some phone calls weren’t getting through in tests. CR said it conducted its 911 test using digital handsets after Wireless Consumers Alliance (WCA) demonstrated that wireless phones dialing in analog mode had failed to connect 911 calls. FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief David Solomon had asked WCA in Nov. to provide results of 911 studies that group said showed some handsets weren’t meeting 911 completion requirements for analog phones (CD Nov 25 p7). FCC has just conducted some of its own tests and investigation is continuing, source said.

CU also plans to ask Congress this year to fix “mistake” that FCC made when it eliminated requirement that carriers provide coverage maps to consumers, Murray said. In Sept., FCC released order that modified certain cellular wireless mandates that it deemed no longer necessary because they dated back to duopoly era of cellphone service. Among requirements eliminated were provisions that cellular carriers provide information about service coverage areas, in part because such information already was provided at retail outlets or on Internet. “It’s absurd to think that requiring carriers to provide less information will make the industry work better,” Murray said.