Wireless Consumers Alliance (WCA) filed lawsuit in U.S. Dist. Cou...

which linked service packages with equipment. Suit named AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS, Verizon Wireless and VoiceStream as defendants. Plaintiffs said they represented customers who bought mobile service from those carriers in N.Y.C. and surrounding counties. Complaint said carriers “market handsets and cellular/PCS services through tying arrangements whereby subscribers are required to purchase a handset only from their carrier or their carrier’s authorized sales representatives.” Handsets are programmed to bar porting of handsets or numbers between networks of different carriers, restricting customers from switching carriers and “causing artificially elevated market prices for cellular and PCS services and handsets,” WCA said. Suit seeks monetary damages for “artificially elevated market prices” and relief against “anticompetitive” practices. It cited 1992 FCC order that it said clarified agency’s policy on bundling wireless phones and services and agency at that time allowed carriers to continue to offer phones and services as bundled package as long as wireless service also was offered separately on nondiscriminatory basis. “Though FCC rules require carriers to provide service on the same terms regardless of whether the subscriber purchased a bundled phone from the carrier or an unbundled phone from a source other than the carrier,” suit said, none of 4 carriers did so. “Instead, each carrier requires a subscriber to purchase a mobile phone from that carrier or its authorized retail sales agent as a condition of obtaining service.” WCA said “number of handset manufacturers has now dwindled by half and the handset market is controlled by the carriers.” Consumer group said: “There is virtually no place a consumer can go to purchase a phone other than a carrier’s retail store or the outlet of a carrier authorized agent. Consumers must ‘purchase’ handsets from the phones selected by the carrier.”