If You Liked FEMA, You’ll Love BellSouth

Jeff Pulver and Tom Evslin petitioned to the FCC that BellSouth provide voicemail or remot call forwarding to its customers during a disater. "The whole point of the petition is to make them reachable on their old phone NUMBERS – the numbers that their family and friends know. People who had mobile phones, VoIP, or did have voicemail accounts were reachable even though they weren’t in their homes. But those who were too poor to have these amenities were unreachable. This doesn’t have to happen again." Tom goes through the arguments from BellSouth and explains why this should be instituted Now. He concludes, "I had a secret hope that BellSouth and the other carriers would say “don’t regulate us; we’re going to do this sensible stuff anyway.” That would have been a good answer and demonstrated concern for their customers. Instead they’ve thrown up a smokescreen of spurious objections and excuses. That’s why monopolies need to be regulated."