Annual Lifeline Recertification Should Mean Once Per Calendar Year, Commenters Say
A proposal by General Communication Inc. for flexibility in “annual recertification” of Lifeline subscribers saw support from USTelecom, AT&T, NTCA and Tracfone Wireless. GCI asked the FCC to clarify that “annual” could mean once per calendar year, rather than 12 months from the last certification (CD Oct 24 p12). Sprint Nextel said it “would not object to allowing some flexibility in timing of the recertification effort,” but suggested a “safe harbor standard” that would give 12 months of leeway from either the subscriber’s anniversary date or the date of the last certification.
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.
"The more flexibility” ETCs have, “the more people you get [recertified] during the ordinary course of dealing with them, as opposed to having to chase people down,” GCI attorney John Nakahata of Wiltshire Grannis told us. For instance, it’s “much less disruptive to the consumer” if they can recertify when they stop in to a store for a new handset, he said. “And from a provider perspective, more flexibility is better."
GCI petitioned for clarification after FCC staff said the commission interprets an “annual” recertification rule require recertification within 12 months of a subscriber’s most recent certification instead of just once per calendar year, the telco said in its petition (http://xrl.us/bn27t7). “This approach imposes unnecessary and unjustified costs on ETCs without any corresponding public benefit,” GCI wrote, pushing for “annual” certification to allow for recertification any time in the calendar year.
"Any other interpretation would be impossible for carriers to implement,” said USTelecom, arguing for “prompt grant” of the clarification sought by GCI (http://xrl.us/bn27uo). Requiring recertification once every 12 months would “flood carrier call centers and otherwise overwhelm ETC resources,” the association wrote, arguing that “conducting recertification calls and/or sending recertification correspondence simply cannot be done at a single point in time each year for the entire base of Lifeline customers."
Requiring Lifeline providers to recertify customers based on their individualized 2012 recertification dates would be “extraordinarily burdensome, the benefit of which is unknown,” wrote AT&T, describing itself as the largest wireline provider of Lifeline service (http://xrl.us/bn27u4). Such an “onerous requirement” would balloon its wireline affiliates’ personnel costs by up to 85 percent, AT&T said. Like other large Lifeline providers, AT&T “anticipates using the full calendar year” to complete 2013 recertification efforts, doing it in “waves that run throughout next year,” the telco said.
For NTCA, recertifying once per calendar year would give ETCs a “much more reasonable and cost-effective approach to the certification process” while still helping the commission eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, the association said (http://xrl.us/bn27vk). Tracfone said it agrees with GCI’s interpretation, but doesn’t think any clarification is required. “The rule as written is explicit and the plain, commonly-accepted meaning of the term ‘annual’ means once per year,” the carrier said (http://xrl.us/bn27vr).
Sprint suggested the commission adopt a “safe harbor” standard, where a Lifeline subscriber could be recertified within 12 months from either the anniversary date, or the date of the last certification. This would minimize customer confusion, even out the workload and impact de-enrollments over the entire year, and promote operational efficiencies when combined with other activities associated with Lifeline anniversary dates, such as re-evaluation of credit worthiness, the carrier said (http://xrl.us/bn27v3).