Newsroom: Phone & Cell Phones

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, DC— Consumers are not satisfied with the wireless industry; they pay more for service than consumers in other countries, and are constrained by early termination fees (ETFs), restrictive contracts, and cell phone "locking," according to testimony by Consumers Union before the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

"Wireless Internet services will increasingly become the way that consumers connect to the Internet. If we allow anti-consumer, anti-innovation practices to continue—such as unjustified early termination penalties, application blocking and handset locking—we should expect our international broadband rankings to continue to slide, innovation to be less robust, and our mobile phone markets to continue to lag behind Europe and Asia," said Chris Murray, Senior Counsel for Consumers Union in his statement before the Subcommittee.

"Free markets and competition can help solve many of the problems of the wireless industry, but that only works when consumers are armed with reliable information about the services they buy and when they don’t encounter undue obstacles such as being penalized for trying to switch cell phone providers.," said Murray.

Click here to read the full testimony.

Contact:  Jennifer Fuson or Chris Murray, 202-462-6262