14 DAY TRIAL // All four leading wireless carriers in the US have responded to an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission on their early termination fees, and Google is also added to the list. The FCC has previously set a February 23 deadline for the companies to deliver their responses, and it seems that all the necessary paperwork has been shipped in time.
In case there are some of you who might not know what the FCC inquiry is all about, we should mention that the commission is focused on investigating the early termination fees that each of the carriers has imposed to its customers. According to Engadget, the FCC inquiry is focused on “whether there are different ETFs involved based on the device a customer chooses.”
Among the responses the involved companies sent to FCC, the news site notes that T-Mobile said it had a single $200 ETF in place, and the users could avoid it by choosing an Even More Plus plan, while Google said that it dropped the $350 Equipment Recovery Fee down to $150. One thing that should be mentioned here is that Google's fee still adds to T-Mobile's ETF, and together they go up to $350.
Engadget also reports that they “remind the FCC that the ERF reduction had been in the planning stages prior to the inquiry being issued. At any rate, they note that the ERF isn't intended as a revenue stream -- rather, it's a way to recoup the losses Google incurs when T-Mobile asks for its commission back if a customer cancels within 120 days.”
As for the other carriers, Sprint said it was prospecting the market for putting in place a multiple ETF setup, Verizon remains at the same $350 ETF for some of its high-end devices, while AT&T says that its users can also choose pre-paid services in case they want to avoid the ETF. It remains to be seen what FCC will say on all these after taking a closer look at the documents, so keep an eye on this space.