What truly ticks me off is that my landline phone bill went up a lot since last year. I am paying more to have less privacy. My bill pays someone to track me and not only that, but I also pay for some idiot’s obamaphone.
Yeah? check this out and many state pull this crap.
You are being scammed by your state to improve the 911 system for cell phones, so they can ostensibly pin point your location using GPS and telemetry off cell towers.
However, after 12 years and charging $1.20 per cell phone, in the state of New York, they still cannot find you if you are unable to communicate your emergency nor has the routing of 911 calls been moved to the closest answering agency.
Instead they have to pass your call out of a cell phone emergency call center but, can only do if you are able to communicate your location.
If you are unconscious or otherwise impaired you’re screwed.
Multiply $1.20 times the number of people living in your state to get a jarring figure of just how much money is not being spent on what the tax was sold to you for.(yes, I’m aware that many do not have cell phones but, many companies provide cell phones as do cities, counties and state agencies. So the number will be pretty close)
The cell phone bill says “9-1-1 Service Fee”: $1.20. You pay it every month to New York state.
But only 6 cents end up at a 911 center.
Instead, the state spends the money on itself: overtime, fringe benefits, travel, vehicles, new boots, clip-on ties, sun block, spray paint, groceries, dry cleaning and other daily expenses for agencies ranging from the state police to the departments of corrections and parks, state records show.
The National Guard, for example, spent almost $1 million at Oswego’s Best Western Captain’s Quarters hotel and steak and seafood restaurant and the Econo Lodge Riverfront Inn. That housed and fed up to 21 soldiers who patrolled the nuclear power plants for three years after Sept. 11, 2001.
The state imposed the fee to raise enough money to upgrade 911 technology so dispatchers can find you when you call from your cell phone and can’t talk.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/the_cell_phone_bill_says.html
“my landline phone bill went up a lot since last year”
Agree, and when I went to an unlimited plan, Verizon quit printing my individual call (when, who, how long) listing.
I even asked at least 3 times to put that info back on my bill. They said OK.
I guess they thought I was the NSA.