It only takes a few moments to look at any of the recent, and now current, legislation attempts at changing the cell phone industry to see that none of them are well thought out, and perhaps the legislators,  in Washington, D.C., should take a few more vacation days, a la ‘W’.

Efforts have been made, supposedly on the behalf of consumers, to relieve the strain produced by long contracts and early termination fees. This is, to  casual observation, a good idea. No one wants to be locked in to a contract that is not the latest and greatest. No one wants to pay early termination fees. Everyone sees the benefit of changing these policies, yet no one (of those complaining) looks closely enough to realize that it is precisely these policies that allow cell phones to be ‘free’ or close to it.

For most cell companies, allowing the customer a $200 credit (the usual amount, and the one most widely used for calculation) towards their choice of a cell phone is offset by the customer agreeing to be in a contract for at least one year. Many customers do not realize that a 1 year contract barely allows the provider to recoup the cost of the ‘free’ phone and pay for the costs of providing service. This is why Verizon, for one, wishes to put their customers into a two year contract, as the break even point for the service and phone provision is about 11 months. What company could survive with a big ticket giveaway, and the possible loss of that customer in 30 or 60 days?

Nearly every one of the ‘unreasonable policies’ that cell phone providers use can be easily explained as a sound business decision, a benefit to most customers, and not any sort of rip off of the customer base.

The best policy would be a customer education of around twenty minutes before each cell phone purchase, with a short video (using someone equally aesthetically pleasing to both sexes) explaining that there is no free lunch, and two ways of handling the contract can be used. The standard contract, that we al know about, giving the customer a deal on their phone purchase, and a standard length of service, 12 or 24 months. For the more restless amongst the populace, outright purchase of their phone, and no set contract, with no early termination fees, could be had. This would allow the customer a better choice, set them straight on the business decision, and be fair to both parties.

Notice that I stated that ‘nearly’ every one of the policies could be explained away with logic. The one that can not is the locking of cell phones. This is stupidity, and should be stricken down immediately. The providers say that locking the phones allows them to achieve ‘best performance’ at lowest cost. This is double speak for saying that the tech support people are both too busy and too stupid to work with individual customers to help them set up their phone not sanctioned by that provider. It also allows certain features to be locked out, as in the way Verizon disallows moving pictures from a phone to a computer by using a wired ‘connection kit’. Those who have phones with removable memory can simply use a card reader, but those without removable memory are simply out of luck, save paying Verizon an additional fee to transfer pictures by wireless transmission.

The equitable move here would be to allow anyone to use any phone, but if the phone was not provided by the wireless carrier, no support would be available. (Few people know it, but the CDMA standard -used by Verizon and Sprint- has an equivalent to the SIM card that GSM phones carry; if phones were designed using this, CDMA could be much more popular than it is today, and lots more tech junkies would go with those companies.)

Now if only the people in Washington could use their own powers of reasoning (is that an oxymoron? see here) many customers would be happier, less money would be wasted by all, and newer better things could be provided to each phone user.

In this day and age, it is getting harder to believe in the people who represent us. It is almost as if pre-frontal lobotomy is performed on each new elected official on the way to Washington. Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) shows us how little thought was put into his latest efforts with :

Not much has changed since the Act of 2007 was introduced, and Markey’s bill hopes to change that. Among the proposed changes, carriers would be required to offer "subsidy-free" mobile phones sans long contacts, but (somehow) at prices comparable to current subsidized equipment and plan prices. These changes could greatly affect already high-priced and high-profile devices like Apple’s iPhone. Markey’s bill would also require wireless carriers to be a more up front about everything from termination fees and additional state taxes to spelling out coverage maps in greater detail.

With unintelligent bodies like this populating Washington, no wonder it is more popular than ever to be an Independent.

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Tags: cell phone carriers, cell phone legislation, cdma, gsm, sim card, early termination fees, contracts, rep. ed markey