July 9, 2007: The United States is making it illegal for a telephone company to keep billing someone in the military for a long term cell phone contract, if the cell phone user has been sent overseas for more than 90 days. This is part of a larger movement it enable troops to get out of long-term financial commitments (rental leases, health club, and other membership contracts) when they are sent overseas. Some states have passed laws to deal with this, and there is a drive for federal legislation. Meanwhile, legislators are getting more complaints from troops who have had their cell phone contracts cancelled unexpectedly because the telephone companies didn't like all the roaming charges piled up by those transferred for a few months to another part of the United States.

All this simply reflects the changes in how soldiers live. In the past, you didn't have cell phone contracts, with expensive penalties for premature cancellation. Troops who did not live in a barracks, were married, and had a wife (or husband) to look after the house while they were away. But today, many single troops live off base, usually in rentals. If they don't have a roommate, they are stuck with the lease, even though they are living in a combat zone in Iraq for the next three to fifteen months. Cell phone and health club contracts were not designed with such deployments in mind.

The landlords, telephone companies and health clubs are taking different degrees of damage from all this. The landlords are taking the biggest hit, since it can take them weeks, or longer, to get a new tenant. Meanwhile, they lose rent. It's actually worse than that in areas around military bases. There, many new apartments have been built to accommodate the more affluent troops, who, increasingly, are allowed to live off base, rather than in the barracks. The military is trying to fight this trend, by providing private rooms for all troops (except in basic training) living on base. But over 80 percent of the troops prefer to live off base, away from the 24/7 control the military has over on-base housing. Most unmarried junior enlisted personnel are still required to live in the barracks, but that is slowly changing.

Landlords, and other businesses, take a major financial hit when a lot of troops from a local base are sent overseas. But the "break a lease when you get shipped off to a combat zone" laws are inevitable, and landlords (as well as telephone companies, health clubs and so on) are going to have to work that into their business model.