Several local exchange providers urged the Michigan Public Service Commission to rework a proposed revamp of service quality rules that would ease requirements for directory assistance and other operator services but set new requirements for repairs and consumer disclosures. The proposed rules (Case U-14962) still would require one day’s basic service credit for each outage day after the first 36 hours, but would add a new requirement that providers failing to meet the 36-hour outage repair standard for three months in a row would pay the daily credit plus $5 for the fourth and subsequent days of an outage. Local carriers would have to provide another way for customers to reach E-911 if service is out more than four hours. Carrier service centers would have to answer all calls within three minutes. Carriers would have to give customers a clear and simple statement of rates and terms for services at signup, comply with federal and state truth-in-billing laws and E-911 service requirements and clearly disclose limits on availability or use in ads for specific services or bundles. In comments on the proposed rules, the Michigan Telecom Association said the revisions would unjustifiably increase PSC oversight of certain service quality areas rather than following a 2005 state law urging reliance on market forces to protect consumers. Verizon and AT&T said tougher rules are justified only in the case of a proven market failure, which hasn’t happened in this instance. Competitive carrier Cbeyond Communications, which specializes in smaller business customers, said there has been no failure in the business service marketplace to justify imposing new quality rules on business service. It said most PSC service concerns are covered in service contracts. Competitive carrier One Communications said the rules as proposed would present compliance burdens to competitive carriers and aren’t necessary to protect customer welfare.
The Texas Public Utility Commission staff urged rejection of a Level 3 Communications petition to end state review of mergers and acquisitions among competitive carriers. Level 3 said state regulation of transfer-of- control transactions harkens back to the telecom monopoly area. It said federal reviews of these transactions adequately protect consumers. The PUC staff said it wouldn’t object to modifying state merger review processes to align them with federal processes, but said Level 3’s proposal would go beyond this to “virtually eliminate” PUC review of mergers and acquisitions. The staff said PUC reviews of competitive carrier mergers/acquisitions have not been overly lengthy, with no indication of state merger reviews impairing competitive carriers’ ability to make deals.
A study concluding that competitive telecommunications providers serve small towns but not more isolated rural areas (CD July 16 p12) “raises far more questions than it answers,” a coalition of competitors operating in Texas told the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service. The Texas USF Reform Coalition said the study, sponsored by four midsized carriers, should be “disregarded” until reviewed by Texas regulators considering a related universal service case in the state. The coalition of the Texas Cable & Telecommunications Association, Time Warner Telecom of Texas and Sprint Nextel said much material in the study is dubbed confidential, so outsiders cannot see it. The study is based on data from the four sponsors, but claims of industry harm - - from being unable to average costs across town and countryside -- do not jibe with the companies’ financial success, the coalition said. The study was sponsored by CenturyTel, Consolidated Communications, Embarq and Windstream. The coalition said it “is not suggesting that the Joint Board should attempt to reconcile the claims.” Instead, it should wait for the outcome of the Public Utility Commission of Texas’s “contested case” taking up the same questions: “In that forum, the critical tools of discovery and cross-examination will be available to look beyond the curtain of confidentiality that masks the methodology… used in the study.”
Cities, Bells and a cable group telegraphed positions on FCC video franchising rules that they may make in court in oral arguments when they submitted filings to 6th U.S. Appeals Court, Cincinnati. Groups representing municipalities said late Wednesday that section 621 of the Communications Act did not authorize a March commission order streamlining the franchise process. The section, on which the commission relied heavily in issuing the order (CD April 24 p2), leaves it to local franchising authorities (LFAs) to set conditions under which they permit cable operators, Bells and others to sell pay-TV, the municipalities said. USTelecom, AT&T and Verizon, in a joint filing June 29, disagreed.
Neutral Tandem (NT), locked in a fight with Level 3, claims the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) illegally blocks traffic, refusing to terminate calls transmitted on NT’s system. The fight is playing out in a dozen states where NT seeks regulatory intervention.
FCC rules governing how broadcasters sell political ads in the weeks before federal elections could tread on stations’ First Amendment rights, former FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick said, taking care to say he hasn’t reviewed case law around those rules lately. Patrick addressed a National Press Club audience on his rationale for striking the fairness doctrine from FCC rules in 1987. The doctrine, requiring broadcasters to air contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues they covered, was “unconstitutional on its face,” he said.
An FCC proposal to require cable operators to distribute must-carry TV stations’ digital signals in standard definition digital, analog and HD when available would violate operators’ rights under the Constitution, cable operators and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said in comments filed this week. An April rulemaking sought comments on a plan to let cable operators choose between distributing multiple formats of a must-carry station’s signal or converting their systems to all-digital before analog broadcast shutoff in 2009. The National Association of Broadcasters and the Association of Maximum Service TV praised the FCC plan in joint comments. Qwest called the proposal “reasonable.”
State regulators at their summer meeting advanced four more telecom policy resolutions, on numbering, broadband data collection, IP relay fraud and broadband over power line cost accounting. The Telecom Committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) decided against resurrecting a fifth policy matter, a controversial resolution narrowly defeated by its staff subcommittee that would have urged that federal Universal Service Fund reforms be neutral regarding providers and technologies.
Net neutrality proponents, and especially Google, have not given “concrete reasons” for such regulation, Hands Off the Internet told the FCC Monday. The filing responded to comments last month (CD June 18 p2). The FCC is asking if it should subject networks to neutrality rules. “There is no current or likely market condition that [opponents] can point to justify new regulations,” the group said. “Proponents rely… on conjecture, speculation and hypocritical assertions to suggest that the marketplace, notwithstanding the extraordinary success… of the Internet, must now be regulated in order to ensure consumers will be protected from non-existent harms.”
House Democratic lawmakers strongly endorsed a unreleased plan at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging open access rules for the impending 700 MHz auction. Two hours into a heated and sometimes technical debate Wednesday in the House Telecom Subcommittee, Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., asked if he could use his new Apple iPhone on networks other than AT&T. “Why not allow this choice for consumers?” Dingell asked.