Growing telecom competition has caused what the National Regulatory Research...
Growing telecom competition has caused what the National Regulatory Research Institute calls “deregulation fever” among American states. In a 52-page report called “The Year in Review: The Status of Telecommunications Deregulation in 2012,” released Saturday, Sherry Lichtenberg identified how 21…
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state legislatures curtailed the abilities of public utilities commissions in the last two years (http://xrl.us/bnb5su). Nine states “severely limited or completely eliminated COLR [carrier of last resort] obligations and the requirement that carriers provide a tariffed basic local service product,” wrote Lichtenberg, the report’s author. The report concludes that the deregulation trend “will not subside” and points to examples in Florida, North Carolina, and Maine of commissions consolidating and adapting to the new order. The report said commissions will need to find new ways of protecting consumers as regulation lessens. As of late April, deregulation legislation was pending in 14 additional states, according to the report. Despite these changes, the deregulation affects only retail services, not wholesale.