The "411" on Wireless Directory Assistance

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) recently introduced the “Wireless 411 Privacy Act”
(S. 2454), which seeks to increase privacy protections for wireless users by prohibiting the inclusion of their mobile phone numbers in any wireless directory without their permission. 

There’s only one problem…the wireless industry is not “poised to begin implementing a directory assistance service” and any such claims are simply untrue. 

In 2004, a group of wireless carriers – including Alltel, Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, and T-Mobile – created the Wireless Directory Assistance (WDA) LLC to explore an opt-in database of wireless customers’ numbers solely for directory assistance, but the effort has since been abandoned. 

Based on this fact, the wireless industry argues that S. 2454 is unnecessary, prophylactic legislation. 

Protecting the privacy of wireless consumers is an important concern of the industry and simply good business.  To that end, the wireless industry has worked with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to improve the protection of wireless subscribers’ customer proprietary network information (CPNI). 

CTIA and its members also supported Congress’s efforts to enact federal legislation that criminalizes the fraudulent behavior by third parties to obtain, sell or distribute call records – a practice known as “pretexting.” 

So to reiterate for the record, the wireless industry has no plans to facilitate the creation of a wireless directory service, publication or database and S. 2454 is unnecessary.