Why aren’t Unlimited Text Plans $1 / Year?

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Still Owe Senator Kohl (And their Customers) Some Explanations

There’s a reason costs for text plans have skyrocketed recently, and it’s not due to increased overhead.  From Randall Stross’s What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting:

“…text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network. That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.

Senator Herb Kohl would like to talk with the wireless carriers about that.

So far they haven’t been very forthcoming.  Stross writes:

The written responses to Senator Kohl from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile speak at length about pricing plans without getting around to the costs of conveying text messages. My attempts to speak with representatives of all three about their costs and pricing were unsuccessful. (Verizon Wireless would not speak with me, either, nor would it allow Mr. Kohl’s office to release publicly its written response.)

The carriers will have other opportunities to tell us more about their pricing decisions: 20 class-action lawsuits have been filed around the country against AT&T and the other carriers, alleging price-fixing for text messaging services.

We should All listen to what they have to say.

I wonder if they’ll get around to talking about what Common Carrier means.  Does the bus company charge You to use the bus’s rest room while enroute?  It’s there, on the bus, whether or not any passenger uses it.  And You’ve paid for it in the cost of the ticket.

From Ars Technica Sept 10 Article Senator to cellular carriers: UR TXTS R 2 XPENSIV:

Kohl’s office is asking each carrier to explain the method behind the text message rate madness, including any cost, technical, or other factors that justify the 100 percent increase between 2005 to 2008. Kohl also wants data on how text messages are utilized, comparisons of how text message packages stack up against competitors, and—perhaps most importantly—price comparisons against per-minute charges for voice plans, and per-KB charges for mobile Internet and tethering plans. It should be fun to hear AT&T defend why it charges over $1,300 per megabyte for text messages.

Again, Kohl’s office made it clear that this letter is more of an conversation starter (though a fairly forceful one) in what could turn out to be an embarrassing (for the carriers) discussion over high cost of text messages. The staffer did, however, hold out the possibility of further investigation, and even a request that antitrust regulators to look into the matter, should the situation call for it.

Donald Melanson at Engadget filed this report at the time.

Here is Senator Kohl’s letter:

For Immediate Release: 9/9/08 Phone: (202) 224-5653 KOHL CALLS ON CELL PHONE COMPANIES TO JUSTIFY RISING TEXTING RATES In Three Years, Text Message Charges Have Doubled for Wireless Customers WASHINGTON, DC — Today, US Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, asked the presidents and chief executive officers of the four largest wireless telephone companies to justify sharply rising rates for its customers to send and receive text messages. In a letter, Senator Kohl requested an explanation from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, which collectively serve more than 90 percent of the nation’s cellular phone users. The text of Senator Kohl’s letter follows below. September 9, 2008 Lowell McAdam President and CEO Verizon Wireless Randall Stephenson Chief Executive Officer AT&T Dan Hesse Chief Executive Officer Sprint Robert Dotson President and Chief Executive Officer T-Mobile Dear Messrs. McAdam, Stephenson, Hesse and Dotson: I am writing to express my concern regarding what appear to be sharply rising rates your companies have charged to wireless phone customers for text messaging. Some industry experts contend that these increased rates do not appear to be justified by any increases in the costs associated with text messaging services, but may instead be a reflection of a decrease in competition, and an increase in market power, among your four companies. Your four companies are the nation’s leading wireless telephone companies, collectively serving more than 90% of the nation’s wireless subscribers. Since 2005, the cost for a consumer to send or receive a text message over each of your services has increased by 100%. Text messages were commonly priced at 10 cents per message sent or received in 2005. As of the end of the month, the rate per text message will have increased to 20 cents on all four wireless carriers. Sprint was the first carrier to increase the text message rate to 20 cents last Fall, and now all of its three main competitors have matched this price increase. What is particularly alarming about this industry-wide rate increase is that it does not appear to be justified by rising costs in delivering text messages. Text messaging files are very small, as the size of text messages are generally limited to 160 characters per message, and therefore cost carriers very little to transmit. Text messaging files are a fraction of the size of e-mails or music downloads. Also of concern is that it appears that each of companies has changed the price for text messaging at nearly the same time, with identical price increases. This conduct is hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace. What has changed in recent years is the level of consolidation in the wireless telephone industry. The number of major national competitors has declined from six to four. And the large national wireless carriers continue to acquire their smaller, regional competitors, with the announced acquisition of Alltel by Verizon Wireless being just the latest example. As Chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, I am concerned with whether this consolidation, and increased market power by the major carriers, has contributed to this doubling of text messaging rates over the last three years. Therefore, I specifically ask each of your companies to explain why text messaging rates have dramatically increased in recent years. Please explain the cost, technical, or any other factors that justify a 100% increase in the cost of text messaging from 2005 to 2008. Please also provide data on the utilization of text messaging during this time period. Please provide a comparison of prices charged for text messaging as compared to other services offered by your companies, such as prices per minute for voice calling, prices for sending e-mails, and prices charged for data services such as internet access over wireless devices, from 2005 to the present. Finally, please state whether your text messaging pricing structure differs in any significant respect from the pricing of your three main competitors. Please provide this information no later than Monday, October 6, 2008. If you have any questions regarding this request, please contact Jeff Miller or Seth Bloom of my Antitrust Subcommittee staff at (202) 224-3406. Thank you for your attention to this matter. ###

-dcm

Torturing Democracy – See it

Documentary GOP Insiders Failed to Block Now Online

A compelling video about the Bush – Cheney Administration’s path to their torture policies is now available online.

(Update 1) (Update 2 – above)

Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

Last month, I interviewed Harper’s Scott Horton regarding a piece he had written on the efforts of several PBS officials, including Jay Rockefeller’s wife (the CEO of Washington’s PBS affiliate) to block broadcast of the documentary Torturing Democracy, which compellingly documents how virtually all of the torture and other illegalities and abuses of America’s interrogation programs were authorized and ordered at the highest levels of the Bush administration (of which waterboarding is but one small example).

That documentary is now available to be viewed in its entirety online — here — and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

(Note – Jay Rockefeller is the ranking GOP member and Co-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee.)

Ditto for me. Here’s a link to each of the 3 parts:

• Part 1 From 9/11 to waterboarding: The inside story
• Part 2 From the CIA to Guantanamo: Copying harsh Communist interrogation methods
• Part 3 While hundreds remain imprisoned in Guantanamo, Congress grants immunity to US Officials who may have ordered torture

(Update! – 111708)

And here is an excerpt:

Also, There’s a pretty good timeline at the Torturing Democracy site, as well as all the key documents in the Bush administration’s decisions to stray beyond the boundaries of the Law.

Warrantless NSA Suveillance Hasn’t Gone Away

Downloadable Collection at Civiblog.org

Here’s a collection of related documents I made shortly after the NY Times broke the story in December 2005 about blanket Warrantless NSA (National Security Agency) domestic (within the US borders) surveillance.

I think the NY Times is reprehensible for sitting on this story since before the 2004 election, waiting 13 months to publish, and then only because the reporters involved had the same story in a book coming out.

This is a comment I left on LawGeek in 2006.

I have been working on translating some of the publicly available PDF’s on this issue into html. They are here – http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/house_nsabrief_docs_012006.html Here are the legal briefs and stuff: LAWSUITS: Pending Litigation re Warrantless NSA Wiretapping ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: Here is the EFF’s Class Action Complaint against AT&T. http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/att-complaint.html AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION Here is the ACLU’s Complaint for Declatory and Injunctive Relief against the NSA. http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/aclu-nsa-complaint.html FOIA Here is the ACLU’S Pentagon Spying FOIA February 1, 2006, seeking from the Pentagon records from Talon, CIFA, MX of infiltration, intimidation, dirty tricks, and spying on Richard Hersh, The Truth Project, Inc., Patriots for Peace, Ft. Lauderdale Friends, Melbourne Florida Counter Inaugural, Broward Anti-War Coalition, Jeff Nall, Maria Telesca-Whipple, and others. http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/PentagonSpyingFOIA_020106.html ISSUES BRIEFINGS Here is the ACLU’s October 30, 2003 Issues Briefing THE MATRIX: Total Information Awareness Reloaded – DATA MINING MOVES INTO THE STATES with addendum, Shane Harris’ February 23, 2006 National Journal report, TIA Lives On. http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/aclu_matrix_report.html I put a lot of work into these…the ACLU Complaint has lots of internal navigation. You can go directly to any page from any page (60 pages), or directly to any of the 195 paragraphs of the complaint from the table of contents, a click away from any page. I hope these, and the other documents on this site are of use to You. Cheers, -dcm

Threat Micro Thread Alerts Widget Added to Tech Resources

The Trend Micro Thread Alerts will now appear on the Tech Resources page.

President-Elect Obama Speaks

Reaffirms America’s Penchant for Change

Ladies and Gentlemen, The President-Elect of the United States …

Well, who could possibly follow that?

AIG Not Telling US Treasury How They Used Up 3/4 of $123 Billion in 2 Weeks

Possible Signs of Internal Financial Irregularities

After taking an $85 billion emergency loan from the Fed, and then another $38 billion, A.I.G isn’t being very specific on how it has already spent most of the money, according to Mary William Walsh’s article in the New York Times:

(emphasis added)

A.I.G. has declined to provide a detailed account of how it has used the Fed’s money. The company said it could not provide more information ahead of its quarterly report, expected next week, the first under new management. The Fed releases a weekly figure, most recently showing that $90 billion of the $123 billion available has been drawn down.

A.I.G. has outlined only broad categories: some is being used to shore up its securities-lending program, some to make good on its guaranteed investment contracts, some to pay for day-to-day operations and — of perhaps greatest interest to watchdogs — tens of billions of dollars to post collateral with other financial institutions, as required by A.I.G.’s many derivatives contracts.

No information has been supplied yet about who these counterparties are, how much collateral they have received or what additional tripwires may require even more collateral if the housing market continues to slide.

Some industry observers say there must be undisclosed irregular accounting leading up to the bailout for so much of the $123 Billion lifeline to have been used up so fast.

“You don’t just suddenly lose $120 billion overnight,” said Donn Vickrey of Gradient Analytics, an independent securities research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Mr. Vickrey says he believes A.I.G. must have already accumulated tens of billions of dollars worth of losses by mid-September, when it came close to collapse.

The article details indications of a sustained effort on the part of AIG top management to bury any details of an internal debate on how to value it’s derivatives contracts over the past few years.  When a former SEC accountant was brought in due to previous irregularities,

He began to focus on the company’s accounting for its credit-default swaps and collided with Joseph Cassano, the head of the company’s financial products division … When the expert tried to revise A.I.G.’s method for measuring its swaps, he said that Mr. Cassano told him, “I have deliberately excluded you from the valuation because I was concerned that you would pollute the process.”

(emphasis added)

Astounding Burn Rate

In the roughly 6 weeks since AIG got the massive government loans they have already used up 90 of an available $123 billion at last reports.

A spokesman for the insurer, Nicholas J. Ashooh, said A.I.G. did not anticipate having to use the entire $38 billion facility. At midyear, A.I.G. had a shortfall of $15.6 billion in that program, which it says has grown to $18 billion. Another spokesman, Joe Norton, said the company was getting out of this business. Of the government’s original $85 billion line of credit, the company has drawn down about $72 billion. It must pay 8.5 percent interest on those funds.

…

For $59 billion of the $72 billion A.I.G. has used, the company has provided no breakdown. A block of it has been used for day-to-day operations, a broad category that raises eyebrows since the company has been tarnished by reports of expensive trips and bonuses for executives.

(emphasis, links added)

US Federal Deficit 1989 - 2004

Possible Legal Violations

Rep. Barney Frank, House Financial Service Committee chairman said on Friday in remarks directed at Banks who had received a separate $125 Billion government buy-in, that financial institutions were “distorting” the government’s $700 billion economic bailout plan by using the money for bonuses, dividends and acquisitions.  Frank said any uses of that money other than lending were “violation of the terms of the act.”

On 7 October Rep. Henry Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held hearings on the causes of AIG’s need for a bailout. (Full Hearing Video).  At the hearing it came out that the week after AIG got an $85 Billion initial govenrment bailout, executives went on a retreat at a luxury resort, spending $443,343.71. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said:

Have you heard of anything more outrageous – a week after taxpayers commit $85 billion dollars to rescue AIG, the company’s leading insurance executives spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at one of the most exclusive reports in the nation…Let me describe for some of you the charges that the shareholders, taxpayers, had to pay. AIG spent $200,000 dollars for hotel rooms. Almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon. They were getting manicures, facials, pedicures and massages while American people were footing the bill. And they spent another $10,000 dollars for I don’t know what this is, leisure dining. Bars?

(emphasis added)

AIG Gets Another $25 Billion – Total: $144 Billion (so far…)

On Thursday 30 October, AIG said “it would be able to borrow up to $20.9 billion under the new program, raising its maximum available credit from the Fed to $144 billion under three different programs,” the New York Times reports.  And there’s no sign yet that will be enough.

From Walsh’s article:

Edward M. Liddy, the insurance executive brought in by the government to restructure A.I.G., has already said that although he does not want to seek more money from the Fed, he may have to do so.

AIG’s unwillingness or inability to place a determinative valuation on their deriviative contracts has poisoned the credit market. As Tavakoli Structured Finance President Janet Tavakoli observes, “When investors don’t have full and honest information, they tend to sell everything, both the good and bad assets. … “It’s really bad for the markets. Things don’t heal until you take care of that.”

The NYT reports “Ms. Tavakoli said she thought that instead of pouring in more and more money, the Fed should bring A.I.G. together with all its derivatives counterparties and put a moratorium on the collateral calls.”

Tavakoli is an expert in derivative and similar financial products, and recently debated “mark to market” options on Bloomberg.

more about “Derivative Valuation Debate – Bloombe…“, posted with vodpod

Morningstar Analyst – May be better to let losses be realised

Bill Bergman, Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar observed, “We may be better off in the long run letting the losses be realized and letting the people who took the risk bear the loss.”

– assembled from various reports by dcm

Accellerating Down that Slippery Slope …

Our velocity down he slippery slope grows faster.

A Cage?

Earlier, there was the Matrix, and Total Information Awareness.

And particularly since September 11, we have been getting more and more data synthesis capability about You and Your movements and activities:

And now, a unit is being brought back from Iraq to be more or less permanently assigned to domestic duties.

The day before yesterday that unit began their tour, according to Army Times.

From the article about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, just returning home from Iraq:

“Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

“The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

So, no worries, right? We’ve gotcha Covered. Land, Sky, and Social Patterns.

Anybody think we need some new plumbing?

For What It’s Worth,
-dcm

A slightly different version of this post appeared as a comment on this item at RawStory.com.

Welcome to Scribal Thrum

Welcome to Scribal Thrum – a chronicle of journalism, analysis, and commentary.

My name is David C. Manchester, aka dredeyedick.  My background is a combination of concurrent careers in IT, Journalism, Military Public Affairs, Constitutional Law, Economics, and  Intelligence.  I am not a Lawyer, nor do I work for any legacy media organisation, military unit, school, or intelligence organ.  My income is from IT Contracting.  My main concern here is that the evolving information, political, and economic systems we embrace be fair, humane, effective, and reasonable for individual Human Beings.

If I had to classify myself by any sort of ideology, my best guess would be to say that having started my adult life as a laissez-faire advocate of capitalism, I have passed through various stages of maturity, until today, when I favor an as-yet undeployed, emerging digital peer-to-peer system of social credit which I would call DotCommunism.

From the start of my career as a dissident military journalist at the end of the Vietnam era through my various incarnations as a Journalist and IT Contractor, I have been struck by the disconnect between the rhetoric emitting from our politicians about what sort of individual (and corporate) liberty the United States stands for, versus the reality of our political economy organised around the needs of progressively more and more consolidated corporate control over our governments, laws, financial systems, “news” organisations, and Personal degrees of Freedom.

As a journalist and military dissident, I have found over the years that the unbridled practice of free speech while in the military will follow You for all the years of Your life, if the opinions You voice don’t strictly adhere to the american military’s “party line” of the moment.   I wrote some of that story at Civiblog, an Open Net Initiative site, in December, 2005.

Since then I have been relatively quiescent, not blogging, just dropping links to previous work in related places.  But now I think it’s time to get a little more organised, a little more active.

Scribal Thrum is the result.