Cell Phone Tax Dec. 13

[patric]

A quick question about the proposed $.50/month tax on cell phones to bring local 911 service up to standards...

Is the fee just intended to cover the cost of installing the much needed E911 equipment (and then allowed to expire) or will it be a tax in perpetuity?

Landline customers are still paying a "temporary" 3% federal tax levied in 1893 to finance the Spanish-American War

http://www.nwtrcc.org/phonetax.htm

so im curious as to what the plans are for the long term.

[patric]

(reviving another "disappeared topic")

(OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.) June 9 - Experts say that despite the state's enhanced 911 service, Oklahoma is far behind in developing an effective emergency network for people who use cell phones to dial.


Last time we discussed this, the new law allowed cell companies to collect the tax for up to two years before even implementing E911 service...
and were surprised at the result?

[patric]

We've been paying this a lot longer than the two years we were told, and still have nothing to show for it.

Meanwhile the cellular carriers continue to collect millions.
Where's the beef?

[Townsend]

This popped up on KOTV.

http://www.newson6.com/global/story.asp?s=10582820

[patric]

This popped up on KOTV.

http://www.newson6.com/global/story.asp?s=10582820

It's a shame most of the original posts on this were deleted to save space, but here we are four years after passing this tax and we have nothing to show for it but lives that might have been saved...


A dramatic police 911 call that was released Tuesday shows that at least one of the men who died in a weekend crash into a rock quarry was alive and talking to a dispatcher before authorities arrived.
Initially, neither the man nor a woman who was also in the vehicle could tell the dispatcher where they were or even what side of the city they were on, the tape reveals.
By the time authorities found them, three of the four people who had been inside a car that crashed off a 170-foot cliff into a rock quarry early Saturday were dead.

The first 911 call was received at 3:32 a.m. and was routed to a police dispatcher. The dispatcher talked to Stone and one of the male victims. Neither was able to tell the dispatcher where they were.
Willingham said that 21 minutes into the call, the male voice says "129th" followed by something unintelligible. The dispatcher believed that the man said "15th," so police were dispatched to the area of 129th East Avenue and 15th Street, he said.

Stone apparently placed a second call that did not go through.
Then she placed another call at 4:45 a.m. Saturday, and it was routed to a dispatcher for the Emergency Medical Services Authority.
The EMSA dispatcher talked to Stone for more than an hour as emergency crews from Tulsa, Bixby and Broken Arrow searched creeks, ravines and cliffs. They could not determine her location until Stone said they might be at a rock quarry.

Once they found the scene of the crash, EMSA workers, police officers and firefighters helped carry Stone, strapped to a backboard, to an ambulance.
The other three were dead when rescue workers arrived, EMSA spokeswoman Tina Wells said previously.

In December 2005, voters in Tulsa County approved a surcharge — 50 cents per cell phone per month — to fund enhanced wireless service. Fees collected in the city of Tulsa in 2008 totaled more than $1.8 million, and more than $280,000 was collected in unincorporated parts of Tulsa County that same year, records show.


http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090909_11_A1_Adaaio109378

[brianh]

Wow, I thought this was up and running. This is at least what I was told should have happened quite a while back.  Can we put someone in jail for this? I think the reason this keeps happening is because no one gets punished.

[Conan71]

Apparently this takes awhile.  The irony is not lost though that testing just started yesterday. 

[sgrizzle]

They charged the fee to put it in and run it. It isn't like they just had to buy one piece of equipment. Cell phone technologies have changed dramatically during those two years too.

[patric]

They charged the fee to put it in and run it. It isn't like they just had to buy one piece of equipment. Cell phone technologies have changed dramatically during those two years too.

My math says four years, with two years being the deadline to have a working wireless E911 system.