FTC Zeroes in on Misleading Broadband Marketing
SAN JOSE -- The FTC will take enforcement action against broadband-services marketing that’s false or deceptive, an agency lawyer said at USTelecom’s Executive Business Forum. “You're going to be seeing more from the FTC in this area,” said Janice Charter, an attorney in the agency’s San Francisco regional office.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Investigating a Sprint Nextel plan for BlackBerry users, the agency decided Sprint didn’t provide the unlimited Web use promised, Charter said Tuesday night. The FTC closed out the case last month without enforcement action partly because it deemed the shortfall accidental, she said, adding that the closing letter was significant for what it didn’t include: A statement that the FTC lacked standing in the case because Sprint is a common carrier, outside the agency’s reach by federal law. “We certainly think that we did” have jurisdiction, Charter said, declaring that “information services” such as broadband “are not common carrier services.”
“The FTC doesn’t really care what you do as long as you tell people what you do,” Charter said. That means “full and conspicuous disclosure” of information “material” to the decision before any purchase, she said.
The commission has asked Congress to remove the common- carrier exemption from its authority, Charter said. “It certainly causes problems for us.”
Meanwhile, a California Advanced Services Fund may be in the works, said Jack Leutza, PUC communications division director. The commission is considering creating the fund to subsidize extension of broadband services to areas without them, he said. The undertaking would be complex, Leutza said.
On state video franchises, the PUC will start reporting to the legislature and governor in summer 2008 how well recipients of commission awards are living up to buildout, “service segment” and other conditions, Leutza said.
An FCC program to pay for extending broadband services to rural health care providers (CD Sept 27/06 p5) remains a priority for Chairman Kevin Martin, a commission official said. But there’s no timetable for action on the 81 applications filed by the May deadline, said Jake Jennings, associate Wireline Bureau chief. Applications came from about 6,600 service providers -- almost 4,000 in rural areas -- in 43 states and two U.S. territories, he said.