Why is this interesting?  Because Sprint put up a major fight to the proposed merger, which could have spurred billions of dollars in infrastructure investment by the two companies, creating better service and better coverage for customers of both companies.  Instead of investing in infrastructure and attempting to improve service for customers, it appears as if Sprint is taking the opposite route and downgrading service for their customers that reside in non-urban settings.

By switching so many customers onto a roaming plan, Sprint is taking advantage of an FCC rule that forces wireless companies to offer their networks to competitors for roaming services.  Many were critical of this rule at the time of its drafting, and warned of a situation that could foster less investment, less innovation, poorer service for customers, and increased costs to consumers.  It appears that with Sprint’s decision, they may be proving many of the critics of the FCC rule right.  In effect, the detractors were worried that some wireless providers would simply say, “Why buy (in this case, build), when you can rent?”

Although Sprint’s decision won’t affect Sprint customers in the form of immediate price increases (most Sprint customers have roaming built into their plans), it could be a major blow to customers of not just Sprint, but to wireless consumers everywhere.  This decision could lead to higher prices and poorer service in the long run, as more and more consumers are piled onto the same network, without any investment into new networks.  The FCC roaming rule doesn’t seem to provide wireless providers any incentive to build out their own networks, when it’s just as easy and much cheaper to take advantage of existing networks built by competitors.

Alternatively, it appears AT&T may be ready to pay a high premium in order to secure more broadband, in order to roll out its LTE network to its customers.  There are signals that AT&T may be interested in purchasing Dish Network in a deal that would be worth well over $5 billion.

The FCC’s stated goal has been to increase broadband access to everyone, and about the need to increase spectrum to increase the accessibility of high-speed Internet to everyone.  If the Sprint announcement is a sign of things to come, then it looks as if the FCC could have made a miscalculation in the most appropriate way to make wireless broadband accessible to more people.

“No-fault” insurance fraud can be fixed by a bill (e.g. Florida’s HB 119) that amends current law by stating each behavior that’s unlawful and subjecting it to felony-length prison time, or by a bill (e.g. HB 1007) that repeals “no-fault” law and replaces it with an obligation to carry liability coverage – the norm in states which believe bad drivers should pay heavily for bad driving.

The Florida bills’ “fix no-fault” and “replace no-fault” approaches carefully preserve a sane requirement for immediate emergency treatment coverage (up to $10,000) for victims of an automobile accident.

But “fix no-fault” and “replace no-fault” approaches come down hard on anyone involved in fraud, inappropriate medical treatment, abusive litigation, and slow reimbursement by insurance companies.   Besides stern penalties, these laws specify what diagnostic treatments are legitimate, that medical charges and attorney fees must be reasonable, what personal injury treatment advertising is permitted and they put limits on what kind of client solicitation clinic-owning lawyers can do.   They also affirm the right of insurers to sue all parties involved in insurance fraud.

It’s regrettable that the legislature needed to craft laws so very complex, but fraud and danger to the public are so rampant that it’s necessary.   The soupy mess called “no-fault” may have seemed stylish when passed, but it was clearly a Trojan horse for ripping off the Florida consumer and exposing us to injury or death due to staged accidents.   Our kudos to the legislators who haven’t forgotten about protecting the consumer!

Alan Daley is a retired businessman living in Florida.  He follows public policy from the consumer’s perspective

No longer do businesses have to spend thousands of dollars on information technology infrastructure, expensive servers, or on overpriced licenses for software. The acceleration of lightweight tools being produced by startups in New York, Silicon Valley, and in enclaves across the country.

Cloud computing is a broad term that can encompass many tools and services available across the Internet. Small startups like Evernote and Dropbox, large companies like Microsoft and Apple, and mid-sized companies who have been in the game for a long time like 37signals offer a broad array of tools that allow small businesses to work and store their information online.

Evernote is a simple notepad tool that allows you to take notes and store information that you deem important. Not unlike how many would have used Notepad or TextEdit. The genius behind Evernote, however, is its ability to sync across multiple platforms, and be available to multiple users of Evernote. I can write out notes on my laptop, access them while I’m on the road via the iPhone app, and grant access to others on my team who can read and edit the same notepad. Microsoft and Apple are now offering similar tools in Microsoft’s OneNote and Apple’s iCloud service.

Dropbox is a relatively new service that allows you to upload and store large files on their servers. Have a big PowerPoint presentation or a large Photoshop file that you’ll created at the office, but will need at home or at another location? You can upload the file to your Dropbox folder, which is stored conveniently on your desktop or in your toolbar, and be able to access the file anywhere you’re logged into your Dropbox account. Have a file you need to share with members of your team spread out across the country? You can create a public URL that allows people to simply click a link and download the file directly to your computer. Box.net is a similar service, and services customers both large and small. Box.net has grown into a huge company, currently calling 77% of Fortune 500 companies clients.

In the past, small businesses spent thousands of dollars to accountants and lawyers to keep their books and pay their taxes. Now, there are a number of web-based services that allow companies to keep their books and their finances organized. New startups like Freshbooks allows companies to issue invoices and keep track of billing online, and established organizations like Inuit offer a variety of online based services to help keep their finances in order. 

Word Processing is an industry that has long been dominated by Microsoft, but has recently been challenged by Google, who offers a variety of cloud services with their Google Docs service. Microsoft, however, has recently released Office 365, an innovative and easy to use cloud computing service that allows you to access your Word documents and Excel spreadsheets from wherever you work, with all of your documents stored in the cloud.

Square is a service founded by one of the co-founders of Twitter. It turns any smartphone or tablet into a mobile credit card reader, and allows businesses to bypass the expensive and onerous steps needed to accept credit cards. So far, it’s been adopted by over 800,000 businesses, and processes $2 billion a year in transactions. This lightweight, simple technology has made doing retail business much more inexpensive, and opens up the door to even more possibilities of innovative technologies to help small businesses operate.

When companies utilize these low cost tools to make their businesses more productive, helps spur the economy, and frees up their capital to spend on what many might consider to be more important expenditures. It cuts the red tape and allows small businesses do what they do best.

According to a report by IMS Research in 2010, there are now over 5 billion devices that connect to the Internet, a very small percentage of which are currently being counted by the FCC. This includes iPods, tablets, wireless phones, set-top boxes, televisions, and yes, computers. According to the same study, they expect Internet-enabled devices to explode to 22 billion within 10 years. This will include cars with Internet connectivity as well as home appliances and other devices.

The implications of this could be huge. If the FCC isn’t taking into account a major portion of the Internet device world, they could be making policy based on outdated technology and standards. For instance, if the Universal Service Fund (USF) decides that money will be put towards desktop computers for low-income communities, who’s to say that this will be the preferred method of Internet connectivity in a few short years? There are new Internet devices popping up everyday—even your refrigerator or microwave could be Internet enabled in a few years. The FCC’s own data showed that wireless enabled devices eclipsed wireless devices in 2008. Who would have guessed, even a few years ago, that more people would use a mobile device to browse the Internet than a PC? Well, it’s true, according to a study by mobile apps firm Flurry. According to this study, users spend 9% more time browsing the web with a mobile device that by using a PC. By codifying laws and regulations surrounding certain devices, while ignoring others, the FCC could risk impeding innovation and progress in the field of Internet enabled devices.

Many are calling for computer subsidies, USF and broadband minimum speeds to be set in place–rules that could be disjointed with future computing.  Desktops and laptops may not be a preferred connection for those “unconnected” or low-income consumers. Regulations presume too much, because they harden rules based on today’s paradigm.   Technology changes, but these rules don’t.

By trying to forecast the future and trying to decide which devices will be favored by consumers over others, the FCC risks slowing down the accelerated progress of the Internet and Internet device industry. We’ve seen what happens when the FCC attempts to pick winners in the technology industry—CableCARD is a great example, which I outlined at length in a previous post. The FCC made an attempt to mandate cable companies use certain set top boxes, to what all now see was a disastrous result. Net Neutrality could be held up as another example, where the FCC sided against broadband networks, which they are now considering subsidizing through the USF. The FCC would be smart to understand that technology moves fast, and staying out of the way might be the best option.

Epitomizing these crises, Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund leadership has testified to the governor and the Legislature that, because of changes in the bond market, the CAT Fund faces a financing hole of $3 billion or more, leaving it unable to keep all of its promises, threatening numerous insurers with insolvency and consumers with new costs increases.

The CAT Fund Chief Operating Officer Jack Nicholson has described the current fund as “dangerously overexposed.” However, without financial solvency, what good is your insurance policy?

Despite these alarms, Florida’s consumers finally have some reasons to feel encouraged. After years of relying on luck rather than responsible action, Senate Bill 1372, sponsored by state Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, and House Bill 833, sponsored by Rep. Bill Hager, R-Boca Raton, will help to reform the CAT Fund, reduce the risk of financial calamity because of the structure of the fund and benefit consumers statewide. Both bills are based on a proposal from CAT Fund Chief Operating Officer and are necessary for consumer protection.

Businesses and many consumers statewide have suffered from the risk of insurer insolvency, with roughly a dozen insurers facing liquidation in recent years, despite the absence of hurricanes. Also, Floridians have been burdened with the formerly hidden “hurricane taxes” — policyholder assessments, which have been as high as 8 percent and have been levied on most Floridians, even those who do not benefit from the state’s broken system.

These risks have been hard to communicate, but Floridians are catching on. A survey the American Consumer Institute conducted recently found that 70 percent of Floridians fear being assessed these hurricane taxes, including those that would result if the CAT Fund runs out of money to meet its obligations.

In addition, 80 percent of the consumers surveyed did not want the state to sell more insurance coverage than it could pay in claims, and nearly half of consumers were willing to pay more if it would help avoid insolvencies and taxes.

When it comes to protecting insurance consumers, solvency means everything. In this case, the proposed bills will increase private capital in the market and increase market solvency, thereby protecting homeowners from potential financial losses.

Moreover, these proposals protect consumers from unnecessary cost increases and they put our state on firmer financial footing.

As a consumer, you should know that fixing the CAT fund is necessary and that these proposals deserve immediate legislative attention.

http://www.theledger.com/article/20120130/COLUMNISTS03/120129257?p=2&tc=pg

“The reports of Google’s privacy changes, which will allow no opt out, raises grave concerns for consumers who are growing increasingly concerned about their privacy online.  Google’s dominance of online search and its history of disdain for privacy protections and consumer transparency makes these changes even more worrisome.

“Whether it’s illegally collecting user data through its Street View product, hiding its privacy policy or settling with the FTC for violating its own privacy policy with Google Buzz, the company has proven that it has little regard for the privacy rights of consumers.”

Joint Legislative Study Committee on Automobile Insurance

Statement of Steve Pociask

President of the American Consumer Institute, Center for Citizen Research

January 25, 2012

Raleigh, North Carolina

Today I will talk about a number of problems with the current regulatory system in North Carolina, including the existence of hidden fees and the lack of price competition – both of which lead to higher consumer prices.  Let’s look at the facts.

An American Consumer Institute survey found that 64% of North Carolina drivers did not know that they pay a surcharge on their auto insurance bill so that risky drivers can pay less.  How could they know?  After all, state law prohibits insurance companies from disclosing these surcharges on consumer bills.  Also troubling, according to the same survey, 80% of drivers in the state oppose the idea of having good drivers pay more in order to help risky drivers pay less.  In other words, North Carolinians object to the idea of subsidizing risky drivers, which explains why some want to keep these surcharges a secret, and one reason why reforms are needed.

Encouraging risky drivers to get behind the wheel is not without adverse consequences.  These drivers are more likely to have accidents and file claims for losses, which pushes up everyone’s auto rates.  It also contributes to fatal crashes, which may explain, in part, why North Carolina has higher fatalities per miles driven, compared to the U.S. average.   

The biggest opposition to fixing the current regulatory system is that that reform would somehow be anti-consumer and will help insurance companies enrich themselves.  Think again.  Another big secret is that the state’s system of auto insurance regulation works like a system of cartel, and it is costly.  Rates are set by an industry rate bureau that gathers together auto insurance companies (think collusion), shares cost data and sets an industry price.  It is price-fixing, but it’s perfectly legal and the largest insurance companies love it, because the process allows for nice profits, limits direct price competition and protects market share.  Without price competition, consumers always pay more.

Some claim that North Carolina has among the lowest insurance rates in the country.  Actually – and here’s another secret – it doesn’t.  If you factor in the hidden fee, the mix or urban/rural driving and adjust for cost-of-living, North Carolina is more expensive than most states.  That is the cost of encouraging risky driving.   

The current regulations are anti-consumer – they protect insurance competitors instead of encouraging price competition.  Let’s end the secrets, require government transparency, lower the size of the residual market and encourage price competition for the benefit of consumers.

To read the entire piece, please visit the Daily Caller.

(Published January 24, 2012)