You ever met someone who appeared to be truly happy, the kind of happiness that comes from deep inside? I know people who’ve been searching for some inner peace for a long time. Personally, I think that in order to find your inner happiness you must first find your passion, and every day of your life you must take baby steps toward your passion and goals. Otherwise, as we grow older, we will become bitter and soon resent ourselves for ignoring our own dreams and desires. Yet, ironically, we spend most of our lives helping others achieve theirs.
I hope that each one of you will, from this day forward, begin to take baby steps toward your own dreams and goals….and eventually find your inner peace. – Randolph Randy Camp
More at https://www.amazon.com/author/randolphcamp
Our cell phones have become a necessary commodity but
the digital technology behind it maybe confusing to some people. When
the CEO’s of our wireless carriers knowingly take advantage of this fact
then that’s when I can no longer remain silent. As most of you are
already aware, I grew up in rural Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Our
family didn’t have a lot of money so I understand and appreciate the
true value of hard work and earning a clean dollar. I will always try to
lend a helpful voice to those who quietly go through life but is being
preyed upon by individuals or corporations in the name of greed.
Have a friend ever told you to check out a cool music
video or some funny video but you couldn’t because you’d reached your
data limit? Here’s another scenario that goes on daily: Using her cell
phone, a struggling single mother watches several do-it-yourself,
YouTube videos on fixing a clogged drain because she can’t afford to
hire a professional plumber. Halfway through the third video she gets a
data usage alert on her phone alarming that she’s reached her data
limit. She finds out later that she actually went over her data limit
and the overage penalty fee was much more than the cost of the drainage
treatment chemicals the guy in the YouTube video had recommended to
unclog the drain. If this young mother had went to her local public
library and freely watched the D-I-Y video on the desktop computer there
she could’ve saved her data usage on her cell phone. This raises a lot
of questions. Why does it cost so much for data usage on a mobile
device? What’s the exact charge or face value of a byte of digital
storage space? What’s the actual cost of a gigabyte and a megabyte? And
are these charges the same for the mobile device and the desktop? Are
there any rules or laws by which these cell phone carriers are basing
their data fees and data charges on? Are the carriers correctly
calculating our usage of megabytes and gigabytes? Is anybody
double-checking them? I’m all for competition to open the marketplace
but when the wolves and the hustlers get out of control then maybe it’s
time to bring in the FCC to lay down some basic fair-play ground rules.
The faces of hustlers are changing. Today’s cell phone
carriers are just as seedy as shifty ticket scalpers, walking that thin
line between legal and shady practices. Naively, I used to associate the
term ‘hustlers’ with fast-tongue street swindlers who made a fast buck
on the backs of others. As a writer, I’ve even peppered a couple of my
novels with these types of characters. In real life, a few years ago,
Bernie Madoff reminded me that the most damaging hustlers are the
executive-types, dressed in tailored suits and sitting behind big,
glossy oak desks. As a stock broker and financial advisor, Bernie Madoff
was sentenced to 150 years behind bars in 2009 for scheming his clients
out of millions as they were unsuspecting victims of his infamous Wall
Street Ponzi scheme.
Is Bernie Madoff any different than the current
management and the CEO’s of our major cell phone carriers? Actually,
this question is debatable. The following is a little backstory to help
explain why I’m writing this piece:
Up until the early 80’s, the AT&T Corporation, also
known as the Bell Operating Systems, controlled the telephone service
throughout America and Canada. To stop this monopoly, between 1982 and
1984, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forced AT&T to
break up. This breakup created the “Baby Bells”, smaller
telecommunication companies, which have developed into some of our major
cell phone carriers today, such as Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile. The
breakup of AT&T in the early 80’s created more competition within
the telecommunication industry and intended to protect consumers from an
unfair monopolizing giant. Is history repeating itself? Last week,
AT&T buys Time Warner for $85 billion, and today’s “Baby Bells” are
still walking that thin line between lawful and secretive, greedy
practices, as evident in T-Mobile’s recent court settlement, agreeing to
pay $48 million for misleading its customers into thinking that they
actually had “unlimited data”.
Are there any honest, righteous CEO’s out there who are
sincerely looking out for the best interest of the customers? To the
average person, the world of gigabytes, megabytes, and digital storage
space can be confusing, so, most often than not, when we get that
surprisingly high cell phone bill, we obediently pay it but silently
complain. Ideally, a good CEO will set the tone and the culture of the
company, and hopefully will ensure that all of the company customers
will have clarity of their phone bills and easy access to questions
regarding their services.
Today’s top wireless carriers are today’s data
hustlers, and we must let the CEO’s of these cell phone giants know
exactly how we feel about their fees and overage charges. The mailing
address of some of the top cell phone carriers CEO’s and the Chairman of
the FCC are listed below. Don’t be silent. We can only bring about
change if we make enough noise. Please Share and Re-post. – Randolph
Randy Camp
- AT & T Corp., CEO Randall Stephenson, 208 S. Akard St., Ste 110, Dallas, TX 75202
- Sprint, CEO Marcelo Claure, 6200 Sprint Parkway, Overland Park, KS 66251
- T-Mobile, CEO John J. Legere, 12920 SE 38th St., Bellevue, WA 98006
- Verizon Wireless, CEO Lowell McAdam, 1 Verizon Way, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
- US Cellular, CEO Kenneth R. Meyers, 8410 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., Ste 700, Chicago, IL 60631
- Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Chairman Tom Wheeler, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20554
More at https://www.amazon.com/author/randolphcamp
