By Teresa McUsic

Special to the Star-Telegram

Fort Worth is apparently at the center of a nationwide Internet telephone scam.

The Better Business Bureau in Fort Worth has received more than 100 complaints since Nov. 4 from across the country concerning a local company and a high-tech crime called modem hijacking.

The complaints allege that Premier Premium Communications, which has a Fort Worth post office box, has gained customers through a deceptive pop-up ad and sent bills ranging from $60 to $700 for long-distance Internet calls to the United Kingdom. The customers say they didn’t make the calls. Sometimes, the charges appeared on their local phone bills. Other people were billed directly by PPC. The bills often contain charges for pay-per-view Web site access.

[ read more ]

By Julia Bauer
The Grand Rapids Press

When Diane Hysell realized she was talking too little and paying too much for her cell phone service, she dumped the wireless contract and bought a pay-as-you-go phone.

«I don’t use it a lot. My husband and I figured out this was a better deal,» said Hysell, of Kentwood. «You can see the amount of money you have left on it.»

Because she is not a heavy user, Hysell figures she will save money with Virgin Mobile’s base fee of $20 for three months of service -- or one-fifth of what she paid to Verizon Wireless for a cell phone rarely used.

[ read more ]

SALT LAKE CITY (BUSINESS WIRE)

Fonix to Gain Northeast Presence and Expanded Customer Base with Addition of New York-based Telecom Provider

Fonix(R) Corp. (OTC BB: FNIX), a communications and technology company providing integrated telecommunications services and value-added speech technologies, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Empire One Telecommunications Inc. («Empire»), a privately held company based in Brooklyn, N. Y. Empire provides facility-based local and long distance phone services and Internet services to business and residential customers. Fonix anticipates that it will close the purchase by Dec. 31, 2004.

Fonix will acquire Empire through a merger transaction for total consideration valued at less than $5 million payable part in cash and part in restricted Fonix common stock. For the trailing 12-month period, Empire had revenues of approximately $8 million. With the addition of Empire, Fonix telecommunications operations is expected to report consolidated revenues of $25 million in 2005.

[ read more ]

Bulletin staff report

Oregon Attorney General Hardy Meyers is encouraging consumers to carefully read their monthly telephone bills and look for unauthorized international long-distance calls that may result from «modem hijacking.»

Some consumers have recently been billed for unauthorized calls to Guinea Bissau, Vanuatu in the Southwest Pacific, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Chad and Madagascar, according to a news release from Meyers’ office.

Justice investigators found that many consumers using the Internet have been enticed into clicking on Web sites, some associated with adult sites, that claim to be free or advertise that no credit card is needed.

[ read more ]

The federal subsidies that sustain rural phone companies are likely to be overhauled by regulators as early as next year. That worries the providers that depend on the subsidies for at least half of their revenue.

One big subsidy: the $4 billion in fees that long- distance companies pay rural phone companies to connect long-distance calls to rural customers.

These «access fees» are complex. Long-distance carriers pay an average per-minute charge of a half-cent to connect an interstate call to a regional Bell, 2 cents to send the same call to a rural company and 5 cents to connect an in-state call to a rural provider.

Those disparities lead long-distance companies to reroute calls to get the lowest rate or shift calls to Internet-based phone services.

Some big phone companies have proposed that the Federal Communications Commission phase out the access fees by 2009. To offset that loss, a local-phone surcharge of up to $6.50 a month, paid by all U.S. customers, would rise to as much as $10. In rural areas, the surcharge would rise to $9.

But rural areas would still see a shortfall. It would be offset by boosting the $3.3 billion in universal service fees that fund rural phone service. Instead of the current 8.9 percent fee on long-distance bills, which are falling, a flat fee could be assessed on each connection -- whether cable broadband, Internet-based or wireless. That could raise $2.5 billion more in universal service revenue.

But rural companies resist local rate increases. They also worry that some lawmakers would oppose anything that looks like a tax on broadband services. Alternative rural plans would create uniform access fees across the country, without raising most rural phone rates.

-- USA Today