Telephone Industry

If you're like most cellphone users, you probably think you're paying less than 10 cents per minute for calls. Think again. When you do the math, you find the average cellphone customer actually pays more than $3 per minute, according to a report being issued this week by the Utility Consumers' Action Network, a San Diego consumer advocacy group. I got a sneak peek at the report the other day. Researchers arrived at the average $3.

In a victory for the Bush administration, the Senate on Thursday blocked legislation that would have cleared the way for lawsuits against phone companies that have cooperated with a warrantless wiretapping program authorized by President Bush. The vote moves the administration closer to its goal of providing retroactive immunity to telephone companies and Internet carriers that are facing multimillion-dollar lawsuits for giving U.S.

Talk is supposed to be cheap, but it keeps getting more expensive for millions of California customers because of a 2006 regulatory change designed to do the opposite. AT&T Inc. recently jacked up the price of call waiting, caller ID and other stand-alone features, the third rate hike in the last year. Those small fee increases add up fast, and they might only get worse. The hardest hit seem to be the elderly and the poor, who are most reliant on basic phone service.

Under pressure to end an impasse over espionage legislation, House Democrats are considering a plan to vote on a bill next week that would give the government broad new eavesdropping authorities but strip out a provision that would protect phone companies from lawsuits.

In California, where celebrities, billionaires and the rest of us prize a little privacy at home, the price of going unlisted is going up, big-time. Though cellphone companies charge nothing for unlisted phone numbers, consumers with traditional telephones connected by wires are often paying nearly $25 a year to stay out of the phone book and directory assistance. That adds up when you consider all the other add-on charges on phone bills.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission rarely finds himself on the wrong side of a vote. But that's exactly where Kevin J. Martin was this weekend, casting the sole dissent in a 4-1 decision that could signal trouble for his agenda in what probably is the last six months of his term. Both of Martin's fellow Republicans on the FCC, Robert M. McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate, joined the commission's two Democrats in ruling against Verizon Communications Inc.

AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc., the three biggest U.S. home-phone companies, are working together for the first time to keep customers away from cable providers. Subscribers moving to an area served by a different carrier will be referred to movearoo.com, a website that offers help in switching service, AT&T marketing executive Frank Mona said. The site doesn't show digital phone service from cable companies.

On Sept. 1, AT&T Inc. will cut the number of free 411 calls offered to customers each month to one from three. At first glance, that seems like a fairly small thing. But it reflects a bigger trend -- a systematic stripping away of phone services that once were provided free or for a nominal charge, and a steady increasing of fees for other services. A couple of years ago, state regulators granted phone companies the freedom to price services pretty much as they pleased.

The Federal Communications Commission will decide this year whether to limit fees that mobile-phone carriers charge customers who cancel service before their contracts expire, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said. "We need to look at whether it's something that can be regulated at the state level or if it should be done at the interstate or federal level," Martin said. Separately, the agency ruled that Comcast Corp.

After enjoying years of falling prices, customers are starting to see monthly bills for phone service and high-speed Internet access rise again. The nation's dominant telephone and cellphone companies have competed on price for much of this decade, packing calling features into low-end offerings.