by Matthew Lasar  Sep 5 2007 - 3:03pm  Broadband   

"My husband is currently deployed in Iraq," one woman wrote to the Federal Communications Commission in March. "On days that he calls me it makes me so happy, and nothing can go wrong. On days where he can't it seems like a cloud hangs over my head. I believe that if the phones and the amount charged were adjusted then i would be able to talk to him more."

"When I receive calls from my deployed spouse, it is such a relief to hear his voice," confided another. "We both hesitate to talk long, as the cost of calling home is so high."

Soldier phone costs from the Middle East were supposed to be adjusted by a law Congress passed late in 2006 called the "Call Home Act," subtitled "A bill to direct the Federal Communications Commission to make efforts to reduce telephone rates for Armed Forces personnel deployed overseas."

The FCC began to implement the statute in January. The agency issued an Order permitting phone carriers to stop charging Universal Service Fund (USF) and Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) taxes on overseas service men and women's calls to their families and friends. But the legislation specifically prohibits the FCC from taking the most obvious step: reducing rates on behalf of the troops.

In January the FCC promised to launch a proceeding on the problem, seeking comments on how to further reduce phone costs for military personnel abroad. It has not done that yet. But the Commission did establish an e-mail address for GIs and their families to describe the situation on the ground for the FCC:

It was hard for LLFCC to dispassionately read these comments, dozens of which the FCC published on its public proceeding database in June. Most were composed in April and March by the distraught wives and mothers of servicemen in Iraq. Their emotions frequently overcame their prose.

But it was easy after reviewing these missives to arrive at a simple conclusion. In this age of broadband, satellite, and VoIP, it should not cost any of our soldiers a thin dime to call their spouse, child, mother or father before a patrol in south Baghdad. Not even a penny.

Here are excerpts from these messages, with the names of the writers and their home towns redacted.

"I have a son whom is stationed in Iraq . . . "

E-mail after e-mail sent to the FCC by these women conveyed the same point: telephone contact with their husbands and sons meant everything to them.

"His phone calls home light up our 3 children and give me the strength to make it through whatever is happening at the time," one spouse wrote to the Commission in late March. "It is the only time I get to talk to him about the kids, how he is doing, and how I am doing. It relaxes and revitalizes him. He gets off the phone feeling reassured that things really are good back home . . . "

Some of these correspondents made it clear that they knew that each conversation could be their last.

"We have 7 children and for my husband to call and talk to each of the kids weekly is a priority and needed for my children to make it through this difficult time," another wife wrote. "In fact two of my children's class mates fathers was killed last week in Iraq . . . "

"I have a son whom is stationed in Iraq," explained a mother. "He is on dangerous missions most of the time. He calls us before he leaves for his missions and when he gets back. It is very important for us to be able to hear his voice as is for him to hear ours and to give him support."

"I think his Internet costs 75 a month . . . "

But the problem, not a few of these writers complained, is AT&T.

From their perspective, the telecom giant appears to have monopolized the market on armed forces telephone service in Iraq, and charges market rates or much higher. Most of the husbands of these women went to Iraq with interstate phone cards, but the minutes they purchased ran out much faster than expected when used to call from Iraq to the states.

One spouse explained that in Iraq, her husband bought a 500 unit rechargeable AT&T calling card for 40 dollars, "but we're lucky if we get 200 minutes out of it."

"My mom and I recently put $70.00 worth of minutes on that card," the letter continued:

"and he is only able to use 350 minutes out of the almost 1000 minutes we bought. Please explain to me why it is that AT&T doesn't have an overseas calling card where we will be able to actually use ALL of the minutes that we pay for, available to our troops over there? If they do and for some reason my husband didn't find it, please let me know where it can be purchased at and I will be glad to buy one. Because he can only use AT&T where he is stationed and they have ABSOLUTELY NONE of those cards available for purchase, and my husband and his fellow soldiers have looked and asked, yet they are always directed to purchase and use the state-to-state cards."

Over and over these women reiterated that the AT&T calling cards their husbands purchased have far less value than expected. "The card says 550 state to state minutes for $27.50 + shipping," one wrote, "but in reality for him to call from Iraq that card has only 143 minutes. That is more than nineteen cents a minute."

Another wife told the FCC that she and her husband spent over $1000 for phone calls over five and a half months. "Then here at home I have to pay for call forwarding to my cell phone to be sure not to miss a call," she continued. "This is because if the answering machine picks up it charges his card 10 minutes of talk time."

" . . . those cards that last a long time in the states go very quickly over here," yet another writer confided. "A 120 minute card that is bought at Sam's club isn't even worth a tenth of that at [a military camp in] Iraq. TEN MINUTES!!! Time flies when I'm talking with loved ones back home."

"When the Internet is down, we spend ALOT of money on phone cards," an Iraq based serviceman's wife disclosed. "One week it cost 350 dollars. We couldn't keep up at that rate. Currently we can't afford to talk to one another on the phone, so his mother buys us minutes every now and then. . . . I think his internet costs 75 a month, however it is down a lot. Phone communication is best for our insanity, but we buy like 1200 minutes on the card for 100 dollars but it is really only like 200 or 300 minutes (which doesn't last long!). It would be awesome if the minutes were more affordable."

Another FCC correspondent with a husband in Iraq wrote that "it is ridiculous that AT&T has a monoply on the calling cards that they are allowed to use as they are usually more expensive than other companies and depending on where you buy them there is a large surcharge for re-charging the phone calls."

One spouse reported that her husband knew of some competition with AT&T - a phone cafe in Baghdad with cheaper rates - but the hang out was too long a walk from her husband's base, "and so he has to pay $.90 a minute to call me."

Another explained that, in fact, there were other kinds of phone cards, but her husband "uses AT&T calling cards because the other cards you can only use on certain phones and the lines for those are so long the wait can be an hour. "

" . . . almost worthless . . . "

As one writer already mentioned, many of these soldiers resort to the Internet as a substitute for calling cards, but they find the alternative unreliable and expensive.

"In order for him to have internet in his room in Iraq we pay 70 for it to only work about 1/2 the time. . . . " a spouse wrote to the FCC in March. "We spend about 150 dollars a month in calling cards for him to call home. So we use the internet and telephone to communicate. The separation pay we get is all spent on phone cards plus some of our pockets."

Another revealed that her husband "has spent an additional $100 or more on Internet fees for a poor connection and such slow processing that it has made it almost worthless because you only get 30 minutes at a time. That is barely enough to check your email, no time to respond because the connection is so slow (which is why we talk on the phone)."

The last resort are land line connections, but these too are inconvenient and expensive, several of these writers explained to the FCC.

"First of all there are limited phones," one woman confided. "Therefore, my husband has to wait in line for hourse. . . . Second, the price. It seems as though he will pay ten dollars for thirty minutes. He pays is cause it is so important to talk to me. I can not understand how our soldiers who are making the ultimate sacrifice for our country would even be charged for something like a phone call."

" . . . we chose not to go with landline connection at his base because it was $50 per month of online access," another FCC correspondent disclosed.

But some for soldiers, this option appears to be the only choice. "His area has landlines only," a spouse explained. "Phone access is very limited and there are over 3,000 personnel on site."

" . . . intentionally symbolic . . . "

Not all the individuals who emailed the FCC on this subject were soldiers' mothers and wives. Several parties with some background in telecom billing and taxation wrote in to question the USF/TRS exemption order.

One asked how the FCC expected phone carriers to identify who to exempt for these overseas charges.

"You provided no lead time for planning how to configure billing systems to exclude military calls from the USF/TRS base," he observed. "Specifically, how would you recommend that carriers identify these calls? For example, how will the billing system be able to differentiate a collect call from a U.S. military person from any other collect call that would not be exempt."

The writer suggested that a general exemption of all military personnel everywhere might work, but even so, "the impact of this order was intentionally symbolic, and will be barely noticeable to the average military family."

Perhaps, but if these letters are any indication of the facts on the ground in Baghdad, the average military family with a soldier in Iraq thinks that it is getting royally fleeced, and wants to know why.

These women, like the rest of us, have been told that broadband will change the world, if it hasn't already. They wonder where broadband is when their world needs it the most.

"You mean to tell me that you send my husband away from his family for a year," one asked the FCC, "and then you can't even cover the cost of a 15 minute long distance phone call to the soldiers family?"