CTIA warned there could be legal issues with...
CTIA warned there could be legal issues with an FCC proposal that would require wireless carriers to submit data to the commission on cell site outages during and after disasters, which would be released to the public (CD Jan 22…
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p2). The proposal is “arbitrary and capricious” and “would unlawfully interfere with wireless carriers’ First Amendment rights,” CTIA said in a filing posted by the FCC Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1hjPBqp). CTIA’s objections were similar to those made by AT&T. “The proposal will mislead the public about wireless service availability, with consumers believing that the percentage of inoperable cell sites is equivalent to the proportion of a carrier’s service territory where service is unavailable when disasters occur,” CTIA said. “The proposal will not increase incentives to increase network resiliency. If anything, it will increase incentives for providers to restore inoperable cell sites as quickly as possible, even where that approach would undermine restoration of actual service.” Verizon Wireless also objected. “The proposed wireless outage reporting and disclosure rule would unnecessarily impose new obligations that provide no clear value to consumers, particularly given carriers’ own competition-driven efforts to give customers information about their wireless coverage, and could even penalize service providers for making important investments in diverse wireless networks and service restoration practices,” the carrier said (http://bit.ly/KGVenP). T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/KHzck7) the information the FCC wants carriers to file “does not accurately reflect the available geographic coverage or resiliency of networks after a disaster."