[IP] more on Why cell phone outage reports are secret
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 17, 2006 5:39:51 AM JST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] re: Why cell phone outage reports are secret
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Note: This comment comes from reader Randy Burge. DLH]
From: Randy Burge <burge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 16, 2006 10:09:08 AM PST
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Why cell phone outage reports are secret
This federal secrecy all but institutionalizes poor service and
allows the
weakest cell phone and telecom companies to succeed despite their
lack of
effective network investments or management. This secrecy begs the
question,
which service is the greater security risk–poor unreliable service or
quality reliable service?
Never mind the billions of frustrating and even dangerous moments that
consumers experience by the lack of cell phone coverage during the
undisclosed outages. Imagine stranded motorists or homeowners who are
being
accosted in their own moments of terror and tries to use their cell
phones
for help, but, hey, the service is out for everyone for long periods
of time
(secretly).
Suppose someone sees an actual terrorist plot (or the much more common
criminal terror plot) unfolding and attempts to call the authorities,
but,
hey, sorry, his/her cell phone company is experiencing an outage. Is
this
more-plausible micro-personal-terror-risk scenario, repeated
thousands of
times a year, a greater security risk than macro-reporting the
incompetencies of the cell phone carriers?
Perhaps the FCC and the DHS should look at the situation in reverse
and take
the position that *crappy cell phone coverage are the far greater
threats to
national security.* These agencies should grasp that by exposing
(outing)
the outage histories of cell phone companies in regional markets, the
consumers in the markets will force companies with poor operating
records to
improve their reliability or be forced out of business. [The law of
survival
of the fittest–at one time this was a capitalist mantra].
The situation suggests that the corporations have effectively taken
over the
regulatory processes of our government, to the point where the agencies
exist to protect the corporations from the consumers, not the other way
around. The guise of homeland security secrecy provides the convenient,
although paradoxical cloak of "security" to further institutionalize the
conversion.
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