We are rarely at a loss for words here at www.hearusnow.org, but we have to admit we were left speechless by Verizon’s stunning announcement it’s doubling its already ridiculous penalty on customers who want to get a better phone or service from another company. Beginning next week, Verizon will raise its “early termination fee” to $350 per line for its more advanced phones, including its popular Blackberry devices and its just-introduced Droid.

It’s already hard enough for the average consumer to figure out all those plugs and wires behind a television and other video devices well enough to get all the channels working properly or record programs. So imagine what it would be like if the big media companies were suddenly able to virtually turn off some of those plugs and rendering your perfectly legal and reliable equipment incapable of picking up certain programming you now get just fine. As far-fetched as that might sound, it is exactly what would happen should the Federal Communications Commission go along with a waiver request now pending before it from the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the big movie and television studios.

We hear from thousands of consumers here at www.hearusnow.org and the two subjects they bring up the most – by far – are indecipherable bills and misleading marketing tactics. With that in mind, Consumers Union – the publisher of this blog – has teamed up with six other public interest groups to encourage the Federal Communications Commission to protect consumers from misleading, confusing and harmful advertising and billing practices by phone, cable and wireless providers.

AT&T and Verizon, the country’s two largest wireless carriers, each made announcements yesterday that could help consumers.

It’s no secret that cell phones sometimes drop calls. In fact, that is one of the top complaints we hear from cell phone consumers who email us here at www.hearusnow.org. But even we were a bit surprised by a story making the rounds in recent days about an iPhone user in New York City who took his unit into the local Apple store because he was experiencing so many dropped calls.

The five members of the Federal Communications Commission – including its new chairman and two new commissioners – headed up to Capitol Hill this week for an oversight hearing. There were some good signs for consumers during the session, especially from new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and House Energy and Commerce Commission Chairman Henry Waxman.

A newly-enpanled Federal Communications Commission wasted no time in getting busy on a bevy of important consumer issues at its first meeting on Thursday.

Apple has been taking a lot of heat lately – including from this blog – over its rejection of a nifty application called Google Voice for use on the iPhone. In the wake of the hubbub over Google Voice, some other iffy rejections of applications for the iPhone have been surfacing, in both the mainstream press and the blogosphere. In some ways these other rejections of apps by Apple are just as or more troubling than the Google Voice rebuff.

When Julius Genachowski took over as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in late June, one of his first official actions was to appoint FCC veteran Mary Beth Richards to oversee an ambitious overhaul of the agency. This week Richards talked about her goals and plans for accomplishing that task in an interview with Dow Jones News Service. We liked what she said.

Apple Corp. took a very troubling step this week in rejecting Google’s “Google Voice” software tool, effectively blocking the nifty application from use on Apple’s hugely popular iPhone. Apple’s action points up once again the problem of “handset exclusivity” deals, those ubiquitous agreements by cell phone makers with wireless service providers that chain up consumers.

Why is my car’s hands-free phone shackled to Verizon? I love the built-in, hands-free cell phone in my Saturn Vue, but Saturn did me wrong by making Verizon the only wireless carrier I can use with it. It's time for all such exclusive deals between wireless carriers and cell phone makers to be banned.

In a refreshing move, the Federal Communications Commission has begun looking into cell phone handset exclusivity deals – those ubiquitous agreements between cell phone makers and wireless service providers that chain up consumers.

The big national switch to digital broadcasting took place last Friday as the final wave of the nation’s full-power broadcasters flipped off their traditional analog signals. By most accounts the transition took place with the vast majority of consumers experiencing no problems. An FCC help line did get nearly a million calls in the days following the switch, although most of the problems were relatively minor and easily resolved.

It’s just over a week until the nation’s full-power broadcasters are required to turn off their traditional analog signals and go all digital. There will be problems, probably a lot of them. But the Obama Administration and Congress deserve credit for helping head off an almost certain train wreck.

Time Warner Cable's financial results contradict its argument it has to go to metered broadband -- and no amount of "consumer education will change that fact.

Rumors are flying hot and heavy that AT&T is seeking to extend its deal with Apple as the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone. The original deal between the two companies runs out next year. From a purely consumer standpoint, we hope Apple dumps its pact with AT&T and unlocks the uber popular iPhone so it can work on any wireless carrier network.

An Oklahoma woman files a class action lawsuit after receiving a $5,077 bill for her $60 a month wireless data plan and the government's digital-to-analog converter box coupon program is back in business.

There’s been some heartening news about the transition to all-digital broadcasting in recent days and the New York Times explains the "Broadband Gap" in an excellent series of blogs.

Read about a Chicago man who got a $28,000 wireless bill after watching a football game on his computer and how the FCC has issued fines against more than 600 telecom firms for not complying with rules aimed at protecting their customers private information.

Despite legislation passed by Congress moving the date of the national transition to all digital television over-the-air broadcasting to June 12th, as many as 681 of the nation’s nearly 1,800 broadcasters have either already made the switch or have filed applications to go digital on the original date of next Tuesday, February 17th. The Federal Communications Commission says it has recently received notice from 491 full-power broadcasters that want to terminate their traditional, over-the-air signals on February 17th. The FCC says another 190 stations had already made the switch or had previously told the agency they planned to make the switch on February 17th.

As we write this blog legislation that would delay the transition to digital television broadcasting from February 17 the June 12 is in a state of limbo in Congress. Without a delay millions of people who watch free, over-the-air broadcasting will see their screens go blank on February 17th. The biggest impact will be on some of the country’s most vulnerable people, including the elderly and low income populations.

There is a real possibility the federal government will delay implementing the looming switch to all digital broadcasting scheduled for February 17th, which is a long way from where we were when we last wrote about this only a couple of weeks ago.

In the latest in an ongoing series of eye-rolling developments, the government agency in charge of the digital television converter box coupon program – the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration – said it will likely stop processing coupon requests as early as next week because it expects to run out of money. Congress has to step in and act fast.

There was a little bit of good news for some consumers about the looming nationwide transition to digital television broadcasting, which is now less than two months away. But there is a lot more that needs to be done -- fast.

The Federal Communications Commission has one of those ominous countdown clocks on its web site, showing the exact number of days, hours, minutes and seconds left until the looming switchover to all digital, over-the-air television broadcasting on February 17th. For the record, we are now 75 days and some change away from the big switch. And with each passing day it appears more and more likely that government efforts to make the huge switchover easy and painless are going to be woefully inadequate, leaving millions of Americans with blank television screens.