Outage Reporting To Be Required Of Cell Carriers
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Nothing promotes self-regulation like regulation. For 10 years, the cellular and satellite industries have been exempt from an FCC ruling that requires phone companies to publicly disclose service outages via a web form.Now, the FCC proposes to include satellite and mobile carriers in an update to the ruling. Now,surprisingly…(yeah, sure)…the CTIA CEO Steve Largent is proposing that industry SELF-REGULATION would be a much better course of action. Umm, where was that enthusiasm for self-regulation over the past 10 years, when it was obvious that cellular carriers were getting a hall pass? Take my golden rule of self-regulation, and apply it to any country or business sector: “Industry self-regulation is far more effective when it is genuine, is initiated by industry, and is not a knee-jerk reaction to avoid governmental regulation. Governmental interference avoidance schemes really take the “self” out of self-regulation.” By the way, neither the FCC’s or the CTIA’s proposals would necessarily make outage information available to the general public – something that we think should be a requirement.
