An Act To prevent anti-competitive corporate and consumer abuse by wireless telecommunications carriers and promote customer choice and a competitive market. SEC. 1. SHORT TITLE. This bill may be cited as the 'Wireless Telecommunications Consumer Protection Act'. SEC. 101. INTRODUCTION. Wireless communication has become a common part of everyday communication. Technology has provided many new tools for wirelessly placing calls and transmitting data, however only carrier-approved consumer equipment is allowed on many networks. This has resulted in an anti-competitive market for wireless devices and hurt the consumer by raising costs of wireless devices and many features on carrier-issue devices being disabled for profit. This act will restore a competitive wireless device market by prohibiting the restriction of third-party devices on a wireless carrier's network, ensuring full disclosure of disabled features, and protect the consumer from many different forms of abuse. SEC. 2. TABLE OF CONTENTS. SEC. 1. SHORT TITLE AND INTRODUCTION. SEC. 2. TABLE OF CONTENTS. SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS. SEC. 4. WIRELESS CARRIER RESTRICTIONS. SEC. 101. INTRODUCTION SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS. (1) The terms 'wireless carrier' and 'wireless telecommunications carrier' (also referred to as simply 'carrier') mean a for-profit corporation engaged in providing wireless voice and/or data services in the United States. (2) The term 'handset' means any manufactured electronic device sold, leased, or licensed to the consumer whose function includes utilizing one or multiple wireless carrier networks to place voice and/or data calls, transmit and receive packet data, or otherwise communicate with other individuals or computer systems using the wireless carrier's network. (3) The term 'third party' means any indepdendent handset manufacturer with or without any association with the wireless carrier. (4) The term 'standards' means the general telecommunications standards used by the wireless carrier, for example GSM, CDMA, TDMA, 1XRTT, and etcetera. SEC. 4. WIRELESS CARRIER RESTRICTIONS. (1) A wireless carrier shall IN NO WAY restrict or impede use of third party handset devices, whether by contractual, technological, or other means, from use with their wireless network so long as said handset device is manufactured to interoperate with one or more of the standards used by the wireless carrier. (2) To facilitate a competitive market, a wireless carrier MUST make their standards available upon request to any third-party manufacturer desiring to produce handset devices for the wireless carrier's network. (3) A wireless carrier shall IN NO WAY lock or otherwise restrict use of any handset devices sold through the carrier's distributions channels from operating on other, similar wireless carrier networks using compatible standards. (4) A wireless carrier MUST disclose publicly a complete list of manufacturer options and features available for the base, unbranded model of all final branded device model(s) to be distributed through the carrier's distribution channels accompanied by an indication of which of the options have been enabled and disabled on the carrier's final model. (5) A wireless carrier MUST disclose, in advance and directly, all fees, forms of airtime usage, and other charges or depletion of allotted units to each wireless customer in written form on a fee manifest to be separate from any other contract prior to entering into a contractual or prepaid agreement. -- Here's an explanation of the six points in the proposed bill: 1. This prevents a carrier from blacklisting unapproved (e.g. third party) handsets from their network and allows any handset manufacturer (e.g. motorola or perhaps even Apple) to make a handset that you can use on any compatible network. Today, most CDMA carriers block their network so that only "Verizon issue" or "Sprint issue" handsets may be used. This gives them an anti-competitive edge in that they've crippled many features on their own handsets to charge extra for features like their "pix place" service when in all reality an uncrippled Bluetooth handset can (as we've proven) provide the ability to transfer pictures to your laptop both privately and without the .25c per picture fee. This is essentially the same thing as the ban that was struck down when AT&T wanted to prevent you from plugging anything into your wall jack that wasn't made by AT&T, only today we need legislation to do it because the carrier is able to prevent this technologically. The carrier can still cripple their own phones, but market competition will give the customer choice to buy something that's not crippled which will A. drive down costs and B. encourage the carrier not to cripple handsets. 2. This prevents a carrier from closing off their network by using proprietary technology. They can still do this, but they must make their standards open to any third party manufacturer - just like today any third party manufacturer knows how your phone jack works. 3. This prevents the carrier from locking their own handsets, so that you can use it on any other compatible network. This is already illegal in many countries. 4. Manufacturers have a set of options (commonly called carrier options) when they present an unbranded prototype to the carrier. The carrier then chooses the options they want and sells the handset. The problem is the manufacturer is still doing much of the advertising for the handset and so the features advertised usually don't match the features available from the carrier's branded version. This line item requires a list to be disclosed of all the features available in the unbranded handset and which options are enabled/disabled by the specific carrier. It's essentially a full disclosure policy. It will prevent Verizon from selling another Bluetooth phone without disclosing that "Object Exchange" is crippled, for example. They've started doing this now due to litigation, but only in a limited fashion - they still don't tell you that Java, AIM, POP3 email, and other features are crippled. 5. This prevents the carrier from embedding hidden usage or airtime fees in their service, or even the handset by forcing them to disclose everything you can be charged for or use airtime for. For example, when I first bought my Verizon phone, nobody told me that using the free ringtone demos would still chew up my airtime - and so the first day I racked up 120 minutes of airtime which Verizon refused to refund. This kind of information needs to be made available to the consumer before they sign a contract.