Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Apple Collecting Customer Data: [29th Apr 2011]

Letters have been sent to Congress this week by wireless carriers defending the way they collect and store location data. The providers argue that they use the information to keep their network working correctly and to provide location based services. They point out that they do no sell or rent this information and that they are careful to ensure the information is secure. In March Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile were asked to explain why they collect this information and for what purpose. AT&T admitted that they could keep the information for as long as five years, but in some cases it was just a few days. Sprint meanwhile said that the details were kept for two years. Apple have also been in the news this week regarding phone tracking although they have said that they collect the information anonymously and they provide users with control over the collection of this information.

A study carried out this week has revealed that small and medium sized businesses who have mobile broadband are more satisfied with their service than those customers who do not have broadband. The difference appears to be down to higher levels of satisfaction when it comes to customer service. Sales reps and the number of promotions and deals available to them. 51% of small and medium sized business customers said that they have a single point of contact, compared to just 19% of those who work from home. Overall Verizon Wireless led the way in terms of customer satisfaction, doing well when it came to performance, reliability, account executives, billing and offers. T-Mobile came in second when it came to home based businesses while Sprint came in second for small and medium sized businesses. 51% of businesses have mobile broadband and one third have contacted customer services in the past six months.

Owners and representatives from hundreds of TV stations around the country have asked the FCC to withdraw its plan to ask them to give up spectrum as they claim there is no spectrum crisis and that the move would not be in the interests of the general public. Even state broadcast associations agree that the plan is dubious and they would like to be assured that the plan will be voluntary as stated. The groups have filed collectively as Local Television Broadcasters and even claim that the FCC would be acting unlawfully under the Administrative Procedures Act. Meanwhile the FCC have said that the spectrum crisis is real and that an incentive auction will free up spectrum leaving space which can be sold for broadband. The broadcasters point out that this process will be disruptive and they would like to deal with broadband providers themselves to share their spectrum.

It has been suggested that the FCC should deny AT&T the right to purchase spectrum from Qualcomm because of their proposed purchase of T-Mobile. The $1.9 billion spectrum purchase has been looked into by the Public Interest Organization who say that this, combined with the T-Mobile purchase could further harm competition. They suggest the FCC look into both deals together. AT&T have said that the purchase of spectrum will help them to deal with the capacity constraints the company has and will bring improvements to rural areas and in urban areas where there has been a surge in broadband use.

An outage which left Verizon LTE network users without a service for almost and day and a half is yet to be explained by the company. The outage resulted in reduced Internet access for 500,000 LTE users who had to browse at speeds of just 1 times the usual. It has been suggested that the cause may have been down to a failure with the authentication server, but this has not been confirmed by the company.