AT&T

Jill Butterworth, Deputy Press Secretary,Office of Attorney General Martha Coakley
writes:

AG COAKLEY'S OFFICE URGES FCC TO ADOPT COMMON SENSE MEASURES TO ADDRESS WIRELESS PHONE "BILL SHOCK"

BOSTON - Attorney General Martha Coakley's Office has requested the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate greater transparency and real-time notification to alert wireless phone users of their voice and data usage prior to charging them excessive fees outside of pre-set use plans.

The Attorney General's comments were filed with the FCC in connection with an FCC inquiry aimed at looking into whether it should adopt measures that would alert wireless phone customers before they exceed their predetermined allocations of voice minutes, text message limits, or data usage.

"Rapidly changing technology, easy access to expensive wireless data services and complex billing practices regularly leave wireless phone customers with unexpected and extremely high bills," said AG Coakley. "Simple protections such as usage alerts and preset cut-off mechanisms that have long been standards in other industries should be adopted to better protect wireless customers from unexpected charges." READ MORE...

Ths came to me via email list from the ACM.

"Meet the cable and phone undustry's latest astroturf attempt
by Karl Bode

Because the nation's largest telecom companies clearly don't already exert enough political pressure on lawmakers crafting our national broadband plan, telecom vendors and broadband ISPs have created a new PR and lobbying operation called Broadband For America. The goal of the group, according to a group spokesman, is to be "a resource for policy-makers in an effort to ensure that the national broadband plan results in a faster, smarter and safer Internet." A brief introduction from the group's website:

Check this out:
State Wide Franchising Not living Up to Lobbyist Promises
Oligarchy at work for the special interest the only winners here are the phne companies and the politicians that obviously get paid off.
It's a good thing Massachusetts hasn't bought into this nonsense.

STAND UP AND BE COUNTED: Help your communities speak out through FCC Reply Comments! Defend Public Access Channels everywhere We need action and reply comments in record numbers to send a signal to the FCC that PEG channels matter to a broad diversity of people from all across America. Why? Read More TODAY

Thank goodness people like Bunnie are around to bring to our attention and to realize the bulls**t and betrayal that is going on, as companies like Charter, At& T, Comcast and others, continue to blow smoke in the face of state legislators, in Tennessee, who end up pandering to them with insider deals. Deals that make rationally thinking people feeling perplexed and abandoned by their elected leaders.

Link to Bunnie's blog here where our baby left us doin' the Tennessee Waltz.

If they are not supporting, with vigorous fight, FOR public access, participatory media that empowers you, what are they supporting? Hint: NOT YOU.

Mauro

Bunnie Riedel of Riedel Communications, provides some perspective about AT&T. Beware companies such as AT&T promise jobs, polliticians and unions foam at the mouth without realizing they may be cutting their own throats by allowing important public access mission and channels to be lost in the exchange. Read for yourself

Sharing this from Chuck Sherwood, ACM list:

IS AT&T AVOIDING POOR, MINORITY NEIGHBORHOODS?

[SOURCE: The (Munster, IN) Times, AUTHOR: Charles Emory, Pilgrim Baptist Church]
[Commentary] To be sure, leaders at the federal and local level are working feverishly to spread broadband across the nation, reforming existing programs to support infrastructure investment, and experimenting with new ideas like the "Connect Kentucky" model that has helped increase the demand for broadband services in that state. But here in Indiana, we seem to have hit a roadblock on the path to broadband ubiquity. As reported in the Indiana Business Journal, AT&T is alone among broadband providers in refusing to divulge where it has deployed its fiber-optic U-Verse service. So the public has no way of knowing which households can access the lightning-fast service capable of delivering broadband, television and phone -- and which households are being left behind, perhaps because of their income, race or geography. Our elected leaders ought to act now to remedy AT&T's startling lack of cooperation and candor with regard to its fiber build-out. The public deserves some level of disclosure to ensure that broadband discrimination does not occur, and if the company refuses to comply, then lawmakers ought to revisit the video franchising legislation that exempted AT&T from the build-out obligations to which every other provider has adhered.
http://nwitimes.com/articles/2008/02/20/opinion/guest_commentaries/doc375d1be320f93346862573f4007be4e9

Because someone asked:
Short answer: Educational purposes.
As folks are crying for cable competition, the telecom giants, like AT&T and Verizon, are lobbying hard to avoid accountability to municipalities and thus the people. Open and democratic media platforms such as this WCCA TV, public access station, and community media in general can shine a light on injustice.It appears that AT&T didn't want us to hear that the government may be reading their customer's emails.
This video has been on line, prior to being posted on ours. It has been posted on blogger web sites, as well as other digital venues, and perhaps even other public access web sites as well. Today PEG channels face many threats. If legislation passes at the whim of telecommunication corporate interest ($), WE, the people, will have less digital, less electronic "public space" to participate on. Our freedom of speech and our ability to independently share views and information and as well as, meet local community media needs will be compromised. This is why we need stronger legislative mandates to ensure public access/community media is protected FOR THE LONG TERM. That is the point.
WCCA

Mike Eisenmenger /Save Access writes:

Your World Delivered . . . On Fire

Another AT&T U-verse VRAD Cabinet Explodes

In the early hours of Christmas morning, an AT&T VRAD cabinet exploded in the city of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Only days earlier, Governor Jim Doyle had signed Assembly Bill 207, a statewide cable franchise bill pushed through by AT&T despite the best efforts of municipalities and public interest advocates to stop it. A saveaccess reader, concerned over the lack of any local or regional news coverage, sent the following note with the attached photos:

"There has been another AT&T Cabinet fire, this time in Wisconsin. At 12:30 am 12/25/07 an AT&T Cabinet at 64th Street and North Avenue in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, exploded and caught fire. The burned cabinet was removed between 4 and 5 am and replaced with a new cabinet by 7 am. The techs worked on the new cabinet all day. This cabinet was originally across the street, but was moved next to an office building at the request of neighbors and the city. Luckily the building is all brick and did not burn. Inquires with the city have said that AT&T met with city officials and are bringing in an AT&T official from San Antonio to look into the problem."

The cause of the explosion and fire, according to Wauwatosa Fire Department Assistant Chief Jeffrey S. Hevey, was due to equipment failure caused by an electrical problem. Apparently, the electrical problem originated in the Avestor lithium battery which was also the source of two similar explosions of identical 52B VRAD cabinets in Texas (see Light Reading). Chief Hevey noted that the destroyed VRAD cabinet had been installed in July 2006 and that the new replacement is now powered by several lead-acid batteries. According to Light Reading, AT&T has more than 17,000 Avestor lithium batteries in its network to power their VRAD U-verse cabinets (Avestor has since filed for bankruptcy and closed).

Chief Hevey reports that a witness heard popping sounds coming from the cabinet followed by a fire. Minutes later the cabinet exploded, blasting the metal doors about five feet away. In the course of his investigation, Chief Hevey said he looked at photos of the Texas fire and found the damage to the cabinets and internal components to be a mirror image of one another. AT&T has since sent the Wauwatosa cabinet to their forensic lab and has not yet concluded tests. The City of Wauwatosa has put a hold on any new cabinet installations by AT&T's pending the company's investigation and report on the recent mishap.

The large 52B VRAD cabinets used by AT&T for their U-verse services have been a controversy from the beginning. Municipalities around the country have fought for control of the placement of these hulking boxes in local public rights of way, and in the case of Geneva, Illinois, the battle led to the courts and the state legislature. Compounding the problem has been AT&T's pressure on states to pass state-wide video franchises, legislation which has attempted to pre-empt local authority and oversight over public rights of way.

Given that this latest mishap comes over a year after the Texas fires, one wonders if AT&T is really tracking down and replacing their potentially explosive equipment. Fortunately in the Wauwatosa case, the city previously requested that the VRAD cabinet be moved off the public right of way and away from several residences. It was then moved onto private property by AT&T where it abutted a masonry wall of a building. Yet, with so many of the the Avestor lithium batteries apparently still in service and now that AT&T claims to 'pass' 30 million homes with it's U-verse service, next mishap might not be so harmless. AT&T raced to remove the evidence and replace the toasted Wauwatosa cabinet (on Christmas morning no less), hopefully they will now move as quickly to replace all the faulty batteries throughout their network.

http://saveaccess.org/node/2018