A member of the regional coalition fighting wireless installations in residential areas forwarded this Sunday LA Times article to Glendale Organized Against Cell Towers (GOACT), calling attention to cellular service providers’ monthly fees added to “recoup business costs.”
The coalition member’s theory is that the funds are being used to fight for permission to install hardware in neighborhoods. The article says that most cellular companies have added a few cents to the monthly charge, and in this passage discusses T-Mobile:
The company explained that the fee “is not a tax but a fee we collect and retain to help us recover the costs associated with funding and complying with a variety of government mandates, programs and obligations.”
…T-Mobile said that “these programs and the costs of compliance vary over time, as do the costs that T-Mobile includes.” That’s a nice way of ensuring that customers have no idea what they’re paying for, or why, in any particular month.
A company spokeswoman declined to provide more detail about the rationale for the fee.
The company wouldn’t explain their rationale, so this coalition member offered her theory:
“Obviously carriers such as T-Mobile are raking in money via these fees, which help fuel their litigation efforts to keep local governments from stopping their installations — ie, in my opinion, that is what the “regulatory programs” basically consist of!