Consumer's Union jumps into broadband, cellphone issues

Submitted by acohill on Thu, 01/06/2005 - 12:03

Consumer's Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, has a site called Hear Us Now that has some useful information on policy and regulatory telecom issues that affect consumers. Among the topics on the home page are cell phone lockdowns, which is the scam used by cellphone companies to force you to buy new phones even if you have a perfectly good one already. CU estimates 100 million cellphones are discarded each year just in the U.S., which is an appalling waste of resources.

They also have information on what states are trying to block the ability of communities to invest in telecom infrastructure. Unfortunately, they also have form letters you can send to legislators expressing your "concerns." Good concept, bad implementation, as doing it this way is really little better than spam. Nonetheless, the site overall is quite useful.