California's Mobile Phone Users' Bill Of Rights Torn Up

from the right,-forget-all-that dept

The battle over California's "bill of rights" for mobile phone users has been going on for years. Back in May, it was finally passed after certain changes to the original proposals. In October, the wireless carriers went to court against the California Public Utilities Commission over the ruling. Well, now they don't have to worry any more, because the new CPUC members have agreed to cancel the bill of rights, thrilling wireless carriers everywhere. This is a tricky issue -- since it's clear that some of the carriers have been less than honest and less than fair in dealing with consumers, and the Bill of Rights was designed to solve that. The carriers keep claiming that "self regulation" is the answer, even though, they didn't seem to do much to self-regulate, and acted more like an oligopoly where all of them set in place a series of "worst practices" that they all followed. However, having regulations on a state by state basis is ridiculously burdensome for the carriers. The best solution would be if the carriers did actually agree to certain standards and met them, but they still seem unwilling to do so. Barring that, it seems like it should be more of a national regulatory issue to make sure that these practices are not deceiving and are considered fair to mobile phone subscribers, rather than a state-by-state policy. While one could hope that such a Bill of Rights in the state of California might force the national carriers to default to such a reasonable level across the country, that didn't appear to be happening.

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