WASHINGTON-The Senate last week approved legislation to curb illegal cloning of wireless phones, setting the stage for passage next year of a bill that could stop hackers from stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from carriers each year.
“It’s illegal to clone a wireless phone. Now we are on the road to making it illegal to manufacture and sell the equipment that is designed purely to facilitate this illegal activity,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
The Wireless Telephone Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) with support from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), will strengthen criminal penalties against mobile phone cloners. A companion bill backed by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) will be considered by the House in 1998.
If the anti-cloning bill becomes law, Wheeler said “law enforcement officials throughout the nation will finally be able to prosecute high-tech rip-off artists.”
Elsewhere, Congress passed a Commerce appropriations bill that freezes fiscal 1998 funding for the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at fiscal 1997 levels. However, given the time crunch, Congress passed a stop-gap funding bill for the FCC, NTIA and other agencies that runs through Nov. 26. This will give President Clinton time to review the Commerce spending bill.
The Commerce appropriations conference report adopted a directive for the FCC to complete a universal service funding study by next April. In a related matter, Congress passed a bill on short order to allow Native Americans to receive universal service funding subsidies.
But the Commerce appropriations bill is probably more noteworthy for what was not included. The bill does not contain financial relief for debt-laden NextWave Telecom Inc. and lacks funding for digital wiretap implementation in fiscal 1998, which began Sept. 1.
Despite failing to get a rider on the appropriations measure, NextWave is expected to return to Capitol Hill next year and accomplish what it could not do at the Federal Communications Commission on C-block debt restructuring.
