Sen. Schumer talks cell capacity regulations
Aug 27 2003 - 12:45 AM ET | In The News
Thanks to the
recent outages, senator Schumer is
calling for an official policy/standard on power backups for cellular communications.
He also wants companies to upgrade so they can handle more capacity (typically less than a quarter of its customers).
Here's our take: This sounds so sweet and kind hearted, but what Schumer is missing is that there is a good reason not everyone can talk at once--profit. Every utility does it (water, electricity, land line phone). If this gets passed and everyone has to pay 4 times as much so that people in one city can phone home to grandma if there is another crisis, that will be a sad day.
