NEW YORK-In a notable exception to anti-cloning laws, a Georgia statute enacted last year permits authorized owners of analog cellular phones to have extensions made, said John Doumont, president of Cellular Additions. On the basis of that law, the Riverdale, Ga., company has built a growing enterprise.
“We have a Georgia business license to `emulate/program cellular phones’ and, to my knowledge, are one of the few companies licensed to do so,” Doumont said. “We have dealers in five states and are recruiting for more. I ship nationwide-to Alaska, New York, Hawaii.”
However, Tom McClure, director of fraud management for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, Washington, D.C., said he begs to differ. Even if a state law permitted cellular phone cloning by authorized cellular customers, McClure said federal laws that supersede state statutes specifically prohibit altering the electronic serial numbers inside the handset.
Included in an anti-cloning amendment to the Official Code of Georgia that was enacted in 1996 is this paragraph, the last 13 words of which are key, Doumont said:
” `Unlawful telecommunications device’ means any telecommunications device that is capable of or has been illegally altered, modified or programmed or reprogrammed alone or in conjunction with another access device or other equipment so as to be capable of acquiring or facilitating the acquisition of any electronic serial number, or any telecommunication service without the consent of the telecommunication service provider or without the consent of the legally authorized user of the telecommunication device.”
Cellular Additions requires proof of line ownership before it will make the legitimate clones, for a one-time fee of $149 anywhere in the country, Doumont said. “Once the change is made, the phones work that way forever even if people switch carriers,” he said.
But McClure, after reading the statute Doumont supplied to RCR, said subsequent sections in it require a carrier’s approval for the change.
However, most carriers are against cellular phone extensions, Doumont said, “although there are a few carriers around that offer this.”
Unlike extension wireline phones on the same number, all of which use the same line, each extension of a cellular phone “has to grab its own channel” when it is used, McClure said. For this reason, federal laws permit carriers to offer extension phones to their customers, “if the adjustment is made by the wireless license holder at the switch so that each extension phone has a different ESN,” he said. McClure added that he is a cellular subscriber who owns such extension phones.
Jeff Battcher, a spokesman for BellSouth Cellular Corp., Atlanta, said he is unfamiliar with Cellular Additions and assumed it is another illegal cloning operation that the carrier periodically tries to shut down.
Not so, according to Doumont, who said he has discussed his business with a variety of state and local law enforcement officials, “and I’ve never had any problem.”
Doumont also said that he advertises, among other things, in BellSouth’s Yellow Pages, on cable television and in newspapers.
Last year, RCR published two stories about lower courts in two states rendering conflicting rulings on this issue.
In January 1996, a federal jury found Don Billy Yates Jr., operator of a cellular phone extension service in Lexington, Ky., innocent of fraud charges brought against him by Horizon Cellular, doing business as Cellular One. In February 1996, a federal court in Phoenix upheld complaints by U S West Cellular Inc. and ordered two companies, One Line Cellular and Cell Phone Extensions, to cease emulating cellular phones for the purpose of creating extension phones.
Of approximately 16 civil cases on this issue in which the CTIA has been involved in the last 18 months, “the courts all have ruled in our favor,” McClure said.
Any make or model of handset can serve as the primary phone for Cellular Additions “Two Cellular Phones, One Phone Number” service. There is an extensive but finite list of makes and models that can serve as the extensions using the same primary phone number because software for changing ESN numbers is unavailable on certain types of phones, Doumont said.
“Customers pay (carriers) a monthly access charge and for all airtime used so the carriers don’t lose,” he said.
