One of the biggest gripes about cellular service in the US is that the carriers’ year-long and longer contracts give the customer no way out if the service is less than adequate — say, as is often the case, beset by frequent outages.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can go a long way to helping consumers make an educated decision before they agree to a long-term contract. But it refuses to do so.

MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan reports that the FCC has maintained a detailed database of cell phone service provider outages since 2004, but the agency refuses to make the data public.

MSNBC’s Freedom of Information Act request for the data was rejected by the FCC, Sullivan reports, because “(r)elease of the information could help terrorists plan attacks against the United States, and it would harm the companies involved.”

Let’s look at each of these.

Sullivan writes that the “aiding terrorist” line comes to the FCC from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which decided that the “same outage data that can be so useful … to identify and remedy critical vulnerabilities and make the network infrastructure stronger can, in hostile hands, be used to exploit those vulnerabilities to undermine or attack networks.”

To the DHS, it appears, allowing consumers to know whether their cell phone will work when they need it is a greater terrorist threat than potential attacks on America’s public transportation systems and its ports, neither of which the agency has done much to secure. Terrorism analysts quoted by Sullivan think the DHS’ concern is bunk, and couldn’t come up with a single scenario where service outage reports would be useful to terrorists.

The second reason stated by the FCC, about harming the companies involved, is, in fact, an ironic and honest description of the FCC today — which is little more than a virtual rubber stamp for the nation’s major telecommunications providers.

The FCC’s argument boils down to this: Truth hurts.

A customer who knows that a certain cell provider experiences significant service outages is less likely to sign up, which, of course, would “harm the companies involved.”

Yes, truth hurts. And the truth is that it’s time to show the FCC’s Martin and his toadies the door.

The recent 2000-2005 FCC wireline (POTS) subscriber numbers are interesting - the number of POTS lines decreased. This in and of itself is not new and of much interest.

What is interesting is where the decrease happened - Kansas. The largest decrease (19%) happened in Kansas, a state not generally thought of as a technical leader. But, one should never underestimate the technical sophistication of the modern combine, most already have wireless 802.11 links back to the barn, VoIP is a logical next step for intra-farm communication.

The next largest decrease (13%) happened in New York. New York has a large mobile urban technophile population and so the numbers for that state are somewhat expected.

Michigan was also a surprise with the third largest decrease (12.5%). I’m originally from Michigan and still have a large number of relatives there; one generally wouldn’t put the state at the forefront of technology.

Illinois came in 8th with a 10.6% decrease. Chicago is a major urban area and the University of Illinois is a technological leader. I would have expected Illinois to rank higher.

Surprisingly, California did not make the top rakings. The only explanation I can think of is my own situation. That as people moved to California from other states, they left their landline in their old state and didn’t get a new one when they arrived. Thereby counting the decrease in the old state and not crediting California.

The future of POTS deserves watching and as technology advances Congress should reexamine whether spending Universal Service Funds (USF) on wireline solutions is the most cost effective use of tax dollars.