"Data Brokers Collect and Store Billions of Data Elements Covering Nearly Every U.S. Consumer: Data brokers collect and store a vast amount of data on almost every U.S. household and commercial transaction. Of the nine data brokers, one data broker's database has information on 1.4 billion consumer transactions and over 700 billion aggregated data elements; another data broker's database covers one trillion dollars in consumer transactions; and yet another data broker adds three billion new records each month to its databases. Most importantly, data brokers hold a vast array of information on individual consumers. For example, one of the nine data brokers has 3000 data segments for nearly every U.S. consumer."
The industry says that it is for targeted advertising. Ha! And it provides risk mitigation for consumers. Again HA!
The data is stored indefinitely. Consumers don't know how they are scored or any way to fix it.
How did I find this 2014 report? This article about a lawsuit: Supreme Court case pits privacy rights against Internet data brokers
]]>AT&T gets a $100M fine for selling unlimited accounts that were impaired for big users. The FCC had to fine them because the FTC did NOT do its job. And then ISPs are bewildered by that? How? It is false advertising. It is total BS. What it really is: Big ISP wondering how their money didn't oil the gears.
Forbes pundit, Fred Campbell, writes a lot about the overstepping of the FCC. Does he notice the lack of effort at the other F-agencies (FTA, FDA, FAA)? Or that there is a huge transition going on that isn't just about the technology - copper or fiber or spectrum, it is about migrating many moving parts - LNP, E-911, broadband, voice, et al - and thousands of players to the new platform. Also, the telcos are sloughing off copper for a number of reasons - unions, pensions, competitors - none of which has to do with next gen networks or tech.
The FCC's main job is to protect Consumers. Have you seen the number of outages including on E-911 systems lately? How about the 2,000 consumers who complained to the regulators about slow Internet, high prices, and data caps from top ISPs? That is why the Net Neutrality laws are being used as a hammer. From a business aspect, you may not like the uncertainty of it, but from a user angle it is about freaking time.
Want to get rid of the uncertainty? Then (a) stop lying in ads about unlimited; (b) build the network you keep promising; (c) put all that spectrum you are hording into play; (d) take care of your customers and deliver on promises. It is that simple.
Politco has a report on the RUS department's failure (?) at administering the BIP broadband stimulus fund of $3.5 billion. More than 40 BIP projects never got started - out of 255 projects funded.
"A POLITICO investigation has found that roughly half of the nearly 300 projects RUS approved as part of the 2009 Recovery Act have not yet drawn down the full amounts they were awarded. All RUS-funded infrastructure projects were supposed to have completed construction by the end of June," the report reads.
" As stimulus-funded networks were built, the RUS was not tracking the number of locations reached or the number of customers who had signed up for service, the GAO noted." [telecompetitor]
Both the Telecompetitor article and the Politico report are good reads. Did they do poor management? Absolutely. One reason: Politics. Failures at both RUS and NTIA were kept quiet for political reasons. Plus those who won awards -- picked by a volunteer collection of people - - may not have been in a position to carry out the project or even the reporting. Florida's NRBA and its management crew had lots of screw ups and failures along the way. It is the government trough.
In the wake of USF Reform and the CAF Trials, 15 Small Telcos Could Lose USF Support: FCC Analysis Shows 100% Competitive Overlap. And 11 more may be voted off the island by you.
]]>Did you know that there was an FTC Robocall Challenge in 2013. (Thanks to M. Leblanc for filling me in.) Nomorobo came out fo that challenge. It works with VoIP providers to block robocalls.
Are you on that list? Sonic is. Why aren't you?
Privacy and security are BIG issues today. Reliable and dependable are table stakes. There are many ways that you can be the privacy advocate for your customers -- and make a splash doing it.
I am amazed that some service providers I know care about freedom and privacy but don't use that as a benefit for their customers today.
]]>Both have been running from wireline for a while -- since maybe 2006. I think they wanted forbearance to get rid of unions and that copper plant. The wireless divisions are non-union for the most part. Unions and pensions are killing them financially (they say).
AT&T will record a $10 billion charge in fourth quarter. "The company expects a pretax loss due to changes in pension and post-employment plans and abandonment of certain copper assets." And "The Dallas-based company will also take a $2.1 billion non-cash charge after deciding to abandon certain copper assets deemed unnecessary for future network activity as customer demand for older voice and data products declines," writes CNET.
Verizon nears "the end" of FiOS builds, according to ARS. "Verizon lost $2.23 billion, but FiOS and wireless businesses remain profitable. Verizon posted a net loss of $2.23 billion in Q4 2014, despite making a profit of $9.63 billion for the full year. The loss included "significant non-operational items... primarily related to the annual actuarial valuation of benefit plans and mark-to-market pension adjustments," Verizon said."
VZ nears the end of landlines as it makes a deal to sell off as it makes a deal to sell Cali, Texas and Florida wireline and FiOS to Frontier for $10 Billion.
The RBOCs both spent big in the AWS-3 auction. AT&T spent $18B and VZW spent $10B. AT&T bought Nextel Mexico from NII Holdings and Iusacell. Verizon just sold Cali, Texas and Florida to Frontier for $10B plus, according to this SEC filing.
Cable won the broadband war when the FCC raised the definition of broadband to 25 Mbps. Now cable will again win market share as it did when Frontier took over Connecticut. Where does Frontier keep getting this money from? And why can't they ever have a smooth transition?
The RBOCs want out of copper (VZ more than ATT) - and want to focus on wireless which is profitable for them. BUT their churn is getting out of control. AT&T "said postpaid churn, or the rate of customer defections, rose to 1.22 percent and average revenue per phone user declined 10.7 percent from a year earlier." [reuters] The cellular market is flat in the US. AT&T has been looking to expand to Europe, but the EU says NO (probably due to Room 641A and Snowden revelations). So it is off to LATAM for AT&T. Verizon is kind of stuck because they have all that debt from divorcing Vodafone for sole ownership of VZW.
Now the FCC is making their DSL obsolete and about to add Title II regulation. The RBOCs are likely ready to leave that headache to Frontier, Windstream (70% of revenues are broadband), and the cable coalition.
Oh, if the Title II goes through for mobile broadband, VZW's super cookies will be burnt.
I was going to talk about this: "Chairman Wheeler Proposes to Classify Internet Access as Telecom Service" but everyone has made so much work of it in the last few months that I decided to give my readers a break. Please note, however, that ACA, et al. Oppose Title II Regulation on Small ISPs; WISPA opposes the plan; and CTIA Urges Different Open Internet Rules for Mobile Broadband Providers. No one likes change. Lawsuits already filed - even before the order has been voted on and finalized. You can blame just 2 companies: VZ and Comcast -- and then spread some blame over to the FTC for not jumping in the fray.
]]>Over and over, I am hearing that Verizon has given up on copper. From repair issues to DSL to stripping copper out when FiOS is installed, the story seems to point to VZ looking to forget its copper plant.
in a discussion on LinkedIn about SLA's, one agent had this to say, "The absolute WORST cases I have seen have all been in the northeast where Verizon's copper is concerned. Verizon seems to have made the decision to put all efforts and funds behind their fiber build out (a good thing) but have completely sacrificed the quality behind their copper services such as T1. If your copper T1 goes down in New York, you might has well throw your hands up in prayer, because that's the only thing that will get it fixed."
Another commenter wrote, "Verizon in some places is actively ripping up copper as they lay fiber because they are not required to resell fiber to CLECs and ISPs at wholesale rates." This has been widely reported, because VZ doesn't want the expense of running to networks - copper and fiber. Plus the fiber doesn't have to be shared and the copper does. The copper means competition. Fiber means they just have to worry about cablecos, who quite frankly are kicking their butt.
Wholesale used to be a healthy business for ILEC's. Today, neither cablecos nor ILEC's want to wholesale anything. In fact, clients of mine in VZ regions have a lot of issues.
For example, "We had an outage about 3 weeks ago that lasted more than three days. This also affected [another local ISP] as I spoke him last night about the current outage. We [both have] a bunch [of customers still] out of service as well. They have been out of service since Monday. The last outage caused an exodus of customers and this one will do the same. Our guys have put in tickets, called to escalate many times. .... no one at VZ will listen. Ever. They simply close the tickets that we open."
It's a systemic problem - widespread - from the C-Suite down - the story has been that every company -- even wholesale customers - are the enemy and the Union and on-union workers must do everything they can to make it uncomfortable unless you are a direct VZ customer.
We have the case of a BK CLEC who had recorded conversations with VZ employees soliciting a customer who was down saying that it wouldn't happen if they were with VZ. [This has been a problem with both RBOC's since I got into telecom in 1999.]
Verizon faces up to $400,000 in fines after New York's Public Service Commission accused the company of not making service repairs in a timely fashion.
What do you do when the RBOC doesn't want to wholesale, doesn't want to repair, and just looks at the bottom line and the few metrics that Wall Street analysts can understand??
Many states don't even regulate the ILEC any more, so what do they do? It becomes the job of the FTC, the FCC and the court system. Talk about a deck stacked against the customer!
When our underlying telecommunications structure suffers, so too does our economic growth.
here's 2 problems with a fiber only strategy for an ILEC:
One, fiber goes out with power, so no 911 or dial-tone when the lights go out.
Two, the installation period for fiber is wicked long. Copper can be installed within two weeks. Fiber takes months. That hurts businesses. I have one moving in 3 weeks and to get 20MB of bandwidth he has to wait months. That won't work.
Ever think that just nothing in this country makes sense any more?
In the discussion about SLA's, the conclusion is to convince your clients to buy redundancy: 2 pipes. That's nice in theory but not in reality. The thing is that you have to set the expectation that if Internet or VoIP is integral to their business operations, no SLA is going to save them, redundancy and business continuity planning will. Otherwise, an outage will be a disaster that they have not planned for. It is not IF, it is WHEN.
]]>The rumored breakup fee for the ATT-T-Mobile merger is like $6B. At that rate, Ma Bell will do anything to have this merger go through. Anything. Lobbying. Donating. Suing people. That's right, Ma Bell is counter-suing a law firm and its customers for suing AT&T over the merger. It's kind of ridiculous, but if customers don't speak up - in legal parlance litigate - then they don't get heard. And certainly the FTC, the FCC and the DOJ are only listening to lobbyists and CEO's - not consumers.
Allegedly in handing over discovery documents to both the DOJ and the FCC, Ma Bell delivered something in the order of 1 million documents. That's right swamped them with info. It's a legal tactic.
According to this source, " The FCC has informed AT&T that its acquisitions of the pretty-in-pink carrier will be reviewed together with AT&T's proposed purchase of Qualcomm's 700MHz spectrum. Rather than reviewing the sales separately, the FCC plans to informally join the two transactions."
I'm still hopeful that the FCC will do the right thing - like only cave in on 1 of the acquisitions. Hopeful but realistic that Ma Bell's ties to the government (specifically the NSA) means that these mergers will close.
Among the documents disclosed, according to DSLRand PCMag, is one internal letter that undermines case for acquiring T-Mobile.
"A partially-redacted letter allegedly sent from AT&T to the Federal Communications Commission suggests that the carrier is willing to pay $35 billion just to keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands.< br/> It argued that the combined entity would bring super-fast LTE broadband support to 97 percent of the country, rather than 80 percent without the merger. The merger would alleviate the spectrum crunch, meet America's voracious mobile broadband appetite, create jobs, and s[ir America's global competitiveness, AT&T said.
The cost of actually bringing 4G coverage from 80 to 97 percent is less than $4B!
So why buy T for 10x that at $39B??? Obviously, to take a player off the table.
The Daily Tech called it the Chewbacca defense.
Stacey at GigaOm has more about the mess here.
Forrester blogs about how this merger is like the US auto industry -- and we know how that worked out. Can you say bailout? Forrester also points out that all these mergers before the FCC and DOJ that are being approved result in HUGE job losses at a time when the economy and the White House need toadd jobs, not loss them! (One more reason to say NO!)
ATT has been gobbling up spectrum for months across the US to fill in gaps. How much spectrum do they get to have? Spectrum is a finite resource. It's public airwaves!
The ATT document is here in pdf.
If you are an operator that provides service in advance of payment, then your company is a "creditor" because your company regularly extends, renews or continues credit or defers payment for goods or services. The Red Flag Rules apply to each "covered account," which is a customer account involving multiple payments or transactions for which there is a foreseeable risk of identity theft. By contrast, a single, non-continuing transaction, where no ongoing relationship exists, is not a covered account. The Red Flag Rules may also apply to some of your business customers.
All companies subject to the Red Flag Rules are required to implement a written customer protection program by November 1, 2008. This program must be designed to detect a "red flag", which is a pattern, practice or specific activity that indicates the possible existence of identity theft. The FTC has identified five categories of Red Flags and provided a list of examples of the types of red flags that fall under each category. If you are providing interconnected voice or VoIP services, the Red Flag compliance program can be combined with your CPNI program required by the Federal Communications Commission's rules.
The customer protection program must include policies and procedures for: (i) detecting warning signs or "Red Flags" of identify theft, (ii) responding to any such Red Flags in a manner that will prevent or mitigate the identify theft, and (iii) updating the Program. The customer protection program must be managed by the Board of Directors or senior employees of the company if there is no Board of Directors. Also, the customer protection program must provide for staff training and oversight of your company's service providers.
Thank to Attorney Stephen E. Coran of Rini Coran, PC for providing this info.
]]>