Thursday, November 1, 2012

Federal regulation of Cell Phone Carriers?

Good old lefty NPR was calling for this today.  They claim the FCC wanted to require each and every cell phone tower have enough backup power to keep it on the air for 8 hours after the electricity failed.  The cell phone carriers successfully sued to block this regulation, some time ago, like right after Katrina.  NPR  is obviously in favor of this, and speculated that the issue might be revived after Sandy blacked out NYC. 
   Hmm.  What do I think?  You can always spend more money to harden the cell phone system more.  How much  money should be spent  to keep every one's cell phone working during a future Hurricane Sandy?  Every buck spent on backup power, secure land links,  tree trim back and such goes right onto your cell phone bill. 
   Who should decide how much money to spend?  The government or the cell phone carriers?  The carriers have some incentive to provide reliable service.  Certainly carriers who stayed on the air thru out Sandy will attract  subscribers from carriers that died at the first raindrop.  We could let market forces control the level of backup, which will result in a leveling off between reliability and cost.  The carriers will put enough money into disaster proofing to give them a competitive edge, but not so much as to drive off subscribers thru increased fees.  And, knowing the business a whole lot better than any bureaucrat, they will put the money where it will do the most good. 
   That FCC proposed eight hour backup power rule wouldn't do New York much good now.  Power has been off for a lot longer than eight hours, and it doesn't look like it will be back on any time soon. 
   People who really care about uninterrupted phone service can get a land line. 

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