Hurricane Sandy hurt my cell phone service?.Cell providers don't ...

Here?s a legal explanation along the line that communications companies, who now provide our cell phone operations want to NOT have to be required to have certain backup standard?s even though their right to carry communications traffic IS acquired by license FROM the Federal Government?.

While the content of cell phone traffic should be free from censorship?..

Certain basic ?s about the availabilty and national Emergency standards SHOULD be enforcable this Dog believes?

After all ?

The Government does OWN and rent out the airways?..

At the moment, in the?U.S. Court of Appeals?for the District of Columbia Circuit,?Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)?is attempting to legally bar Congress and the FCC from exerting any authority over its networks, claiming that the First Amendment protects the company?s ?editorial discretion.? (I am among a large group of current and former government officials who this week filed a?brief?opposing that startling argument.)

The sweeping economic and social implications of Verizon?s assertions are deeply troubling. High-speed Internet has become vital to communications in the U.S. Yet Verizon wants network operators to possess the same free-speech rights that newspaper publishers have to control the contents of their editorial pages. This could preclude Congress from making any law that inhibits a company?s business choices, whether to inflict harm on a competitor or to suppress or ignore points of view of which it disapproves.

Verizon certainly has the constitutional right to make this argument. The country needs to understand, however, that what it?s asking for is to privilege its own speech over that of more than 300 million Americans.

Because any communications company?s job is to transmit speech, not to determine its content, the court should decide that Verizon is not, in a legal sense, a ?speaker.?

This particular lawsuit is just one push in a longer effort by Verizon and the other high-speed Internet-access providers to get immunity from oversight. AT&T Inc., just last week, filed a petition with the FCC seeking wholesale deregulation of its wires. According to?Harold Feld?of the consumer advocacy group?Public Knowledge, this would make the company immune to all laws promoting consumer protection, competition and universal affordable communications. California became the most recent of?more than 20 states?to eliminate its authority over digital networks.

And consider why the FCC now is unable even to ask communications companies about their contingency plans for responding to a loss of power caused by a hurricane or other natural disaster. Five years ago the FCC, responding to?findings?that communications companies had supplied too little backup power during and after?Hurricane Katrina,?moved?to adopt rules requiring the companies to have emergency energy sources. In response, the companies sued, claiming that the commission had no authority over them. Before that case could be resolved, the George W. Bush administration?s Office of Management and Budget determined that such rules would require the companies to incur undue costs to gather the needed information, and the commission withdrew its effort altogether?.

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Source: http://www.politicaldog101.com/2012/11/17/hurricane-sandy-hurt-my-cell-phone-service-cell-providers-dont-want-to-spend-for-back-ups/

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