Planned Obsolescence at
France Telecom/Orange


Orange is the trade name for France Telecom's (the former state-owned monopolist) mobile phone operation and some other retail businesses. They have been my mobile carrier since moving to France and service has been pretty good. So I was a little surprised when I encounteredthe problem described below.

As I prepare to leave France Orange agreed to unblock my mobile phone, since I had accumulate enough usage points to avoid a penalty for cancellation, so I can use it for prepaid SIMs upon future trips to Europe . (Note this is a similar issue to the Skype petition at FCC and the blocking of cell phones to discourage carrier switches.)

I visited an Orange boutique yesterday to get a new battery* for my LG cell phone since the present one holds a charge for only about 2 days at max. I was surprised to hear that even though the phone is only about 18 months old that they don't have batteries for it. They usually stock batteries for only 4-6 months after they stop sales of a model. The only suggestion for finding a new battery was a unnamed store somewhere near Metro station Nation.

So I thought, a great trick! Get people to constantly turn over their mobile for a new model because you can't get batteries!

Do US cell phone carriers have this same policy now?

Is regulation the answer? No. But the real problem is that market place forces can't work on such problems because they don't disclose at time of sale this strange battery stocking policy. Thus we have a marketplace failure. Perhaps regulations for better disclosure would help, but is unlikely from the French regulators who can't even straighten out the Noos mess.

(Noos not only has not paid me back for January and February service that was not provided due to their service meltdown, but is now billing me for March after I cancelled and is trying to charge a penalty because I stopped all bank bank payments to them after 2 months of nonservice.)

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Later found another battery store in Paris and asked them about battery for my LG cell phone. They pointed out that in this LG model the battery forms part of the back of the case so that stocking batteries would involve lots of different one for related models. By comparision, many models have an internal battery which is easier to design for multiples models. So I wonder if LG is complicite in this planned obsolescence?

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* Interesting linguistic note - In French, a nonrechargeable dry cell battery is pile (as in Voltaic pile, a historical term for early batteries) while a rechargable battery for a car, cell phone or laptop is a batterie. Things they don't tech you in high school French!

Is the FCC the Best Place to Work in the Federal Government?

We May Never Know as FCC Dodges Another Interagency Survey

The Best Places to Work, produced by the Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation, rankings are the most comprehensive and authoritative rating and analysis of employee engagement in the federal government. The 2007 rankings are the third edition of this ongoing series, following the 2003 and 2005 versions.

The survey describes its goals as follows:

Why the Rankings Matter

As we advance into a new century, America faces a new set of great public challenges: fighting a war against terrorism, prospering in the global economy, and expanding opportunity by improving schools and health care. Now, more than ever, we need the best and brightest to work on our behalf in government.

Employee engagement and commitment are two necessary ingredients in developing high-performing organizations and attracting the best and brightest. The Best Places to Work rankings are an important tool in recognizing the importance of employee engagement and ensuring that it is a top priority for government managers and leaders.

Since the first rankings were released in 2003, they have helped create much-needed institutional incentives to focus on key workforce issues and also provided managers and leaders with a roadmap for boosting employee engagement. Federal human capital professionals have told us that the Best Places to Work project has heightened awareness among senior leaders and spurred reform of human capital practices. As time goes on, we hope that agencies will use the results of this ranking to gauge the success of their efforts.

The rankings also directly address one of the biggest barriers to federal employment: a staggering lack of information among prospective employees. The Best Places rankings provide job seekers unprecedented insight on opportunities for public service by highlighting the federal government’s high-performing agencies and promoting federal organizations that often go unheralded.

This is the third recent intergancy survey that FCC has not participated in. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission captured the prize as the best large agency for employee satisfaction and engagement. NRC is slightly larger than FCC with about 3300 employees.

NRC Chairman Dale Klein spoke at a ceremony held by the Partnership for Public Service
where he accepted an award for NRC being ranked the best place to work in the federal government.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which is close to the FCC's old 20th & M location, won the award for the best small agency.

Cognitive Radio Attracts a Crowd to Dublin

The second IEEE Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN) Conference has attracted 290 registrants to Dublin this week. NTIA head Assistant Secretary of Commerce John M. R. Kneuer was the keynote speaker. No one from FCC is attending.

A highlight of the conference was the first public demonstration of the DARPA-funded xG cognitive radio developed by Shared Spectrum, Inc.

Why no one from FCC at this cutting edge spectrum policy and technology conference which highlights US progress in the field and has very visible NTIA participation? A previous post describes FCC avoidance of conferences in recent years. Another factor has much longer standing: The FCC International Bureau controls all international travel and gives near absolute priority to any ITU and similar international organizational meetings. So it is more likely to send 2 people to an obscure ITU-R meeting than send anyone to a non-ITU meeting that might be of greater benefit to US interests but not to IB. Thus any overseas "get smart" travel other than by intimates of the 8th floor has a snow ball's chance of getting funded.

We are beginning our return to the USA after 3 years in Europe. Will arrive back in Maryland on June 3. Therefore, blog entries will be limited until June.

Fed Up with the Poor Search Engine on FCC Website?

Google to the Rescue!

The search engine on the FCC website dates back to the early Hundt chairmanship in the last millenium. It was probably the best available at the time. It is woefully inadequate now, especially since FCC does little to index the massive material on its site. (Example: try to find the Skype petition on applying Part 68 concepts to cell phones. Next try to find an old annual report of FCC.)

An FCC friend sympathized with me on this issue and told me his trick: When you go to Google, select the "advanced search" option in the upper right corner of the search page. Then look or the "Domain" line in the left column. Enter www.fcc.gov in the box in the "Domain" line.

Alternatively in the Google search box enter:

xyz site:www.fcc.gov

if you are searching for information on the topic "xyz".

Voila, you will only get results from the FCC web site and you will see that Google does this much better than the ancient search engine built into the FCC web page.

FCC could add this to their web page as I have on my web page. But maybe they don't really care.

Congress Nudges an FCC on Hold
Agency Tackles Backlog of Pending Matters After Democrats Complain

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Washington Post Wednesday, April 4, 2007; D01

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) scolded the five members of the Federal Communications Commission when he finally got them before a powerful subcommittee last month.

The FCC botched handling of cable television franchising, racked up a backlog of unanswered consumer complaints, and dallied on various disputes between industry rivals with little oversight from the previous Republican-controlled Congress in recent years, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said in the March 14 hearing.

Within days, word spread that the FCC was accelerating efforts to complete action on about 150 pending matters -- from regulating cable television service in apartment buildings to settling quarrels over the distribution of telecommunications funds in rural areas. Some analysts saw the move as a direct response to lawmakers' complaints.

With Democrats running Congress, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin is "responding to the sense that Dingell doesn't like backlogs," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the nonprofit Media Access Project. "He doesn't want to be on the wrong side of Dingell."

Dingell's blast was part of the heightened scrutiny and criticism Congress has heaped on the FCC in the past three months, pressure that could help shape regulatory policies this year in the rapidly changing landscape of media and telecommunications. Controlling Congress for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats are pushing, prodding and sometimes skewering the commission on subjects they think have been sidetracked or mismanaged for years, including media-ownership rules and mega-mergers like the one between AT&T and BellSouth last year.

Lawmakers cannot dictate the independent agency's actions. But some say they believe the FCC is taking their concerns seriously.

The oversight hearing by the House Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications last month was the first of several such sessions planned for the 110th Congress. It ended a three-year drought of Capitol Hill appearances by all the commissioners, said the subcommittee's chairman, Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). "That in and of itself is sending a message," he said.

In a recent interview, Martin said the commission tries to be responsive to Congress's concerns without relinquishing its independence. "Is the backlog something that Congress has an influence on? Sure," Martin said. "But we started to address it last fall," when Republicans still controlled both chambers.

Martin and two fellow commissioners are Republicans. The other two are Democrats.

Congress's ability to influence the FCC's decisions is limited and hard to measure, said a number of people who follow telecommunications policy. If nothing else, they said, the current Congress can prod the agency to think twice before shrugging off issues important to many Democrats, such as encouraging more diversity in media ownership and not rubber-stamping the approval of large mergers. And there's always the implicit threat of trimming the FCC's budget if the party controlling Congress is deeply displeased.

"If the FCC goes too far down a deregulatory approach on media ownership or related areas, it will face a barrage of criticism from Congress," said Gene Kimmelman, vice president of Consumers Union who tracks telecommunications issues. "And any small item that gets in the cross hairs of a majority in Congress is likely to be addressed through spending restrictions in the appropriations process. . . . The FCC needs to be extremely responsive to Congress and very balanced and even-handed as it proceeds."

In the interview, Martin said the FCC would be ignoring recent history if it dismissed Congress's concerns. In 2003, he noted, Congress overturned the commission's policy on media ownership by passing a law narrowing the proportion of U.S. households that a single owner of TV stations may reach.

"The lesson I should learn from that is, we've got to pay attention to what Congress thinks about these issues," Martin said.

He added, however, that "answering the concerns Congress may raise is not the same as doing what they ask us to do." He noted that several key lawmakers opposed an FCC decision last year to make it easier for telephone companies to enter the cable TV market in many communities. Dingell was among them.

Congress can directly influence telecom policy by passing legislation or by strongly expressing its views in hearings not involving the FCC. Earlier this year, a Senate committee was mostly hostile to a proposal by Nextel co-founder Morgan O'Brien to set aside a portion of the 700 MHz spectrum -- scheduled for auction this year -- for a public-safety broadband network to be managed by a for-profit company. Several analysts said the committee hearing was a death knell for the proposal, which would require new legislation.

On issues such as corporate mergers, lawmakers can voice their concerns and hope the FCC takes note. For example, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) recently criticized the proposed merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio companies at a hearing of an antitrust panel he chairs. "You'd have no competition -- what a business!" Kohl told a Sirius executive.

Other lawmakers appear to favor the merger, and the FCC commissioners will conduct months of inquiry and hearings before ruling. Given the strong, divergent feelings in Congress and the private sector, the commissioners will try to preserve their prerogatives while staying aware of the political dynamics, said Jessica Zufolo, an industry analyst for Medley Global Advisors.

"That's why they move slowly and cautiously," she said. "That may be the modus operandi for the FCC for the remainder of this term."