NARUC Serves Up Heap of Telecom Resolutions

The Telecom Committee agenda featured a resolution urging the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service to ensure that any recommendations made to control federal USF growth are competitively neutral with respect to wireless, wireline and other technologies used by eligible telecom carriers (ETCs). The resolution seemed to target a recent Joint Board proposal to cap USF subsidies only to wireless ETCs. It also said the board should ensure “continued availability of sufficient universal service support” for all designated ETCs. The resolution said NARUC backs measures to curtail fund growth, if they do not discriminate against particular types of provider or technology.

A numbering resolution would urge the FCC to improve monitoring of phone number use by VoIP providers and other types of phone provider not needing FCC or state operating authority. The resolution says the national numbering administrator has been pressed to track numbering resources used by non-certificated telecom providers. It urges that these providers be required to report their number use and compliance with number allocation rules directly or through the certificated telecom carrier that assigned them their number blocks.

The telecom panel will consider a resolution endorsing a “discussion paper” drafted by a broadband over power line (BPL) subcommittee on costs, subsidies and other accounting issues related to BPL implementation. The document does not take a position on BPL, but is intended as a resource state regulators can use in analyzing accounting and cross-subsidy issues unique to BPL deployment. This resolution also will be addressed by NARUC’s Electricity Committee.

NARUC’s Consumer Affairs Committee agenda featured a resolution urging the FCC to review wireless early termination penalties on contracts, a proposal nearly identical to one tabled at the February NARUC winter meeting. The resolution says wireless market conditions have changed greatly since the FCC in 1992 concluded that contract termination penalties benefited the market by letting wireless promotions reducing barriers to new customers. The resolution says that though wireless carriers claim penalties ensure they recover cellphone purchase subsidies and other costs of acquiring and retaining customers, in the past 15 years there has been no review of whether penalties accurately reflect carriers’ costs of getting and keeping customers.

Another Consumer Affairs resolution would commit NARUC to working with the FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration to educate the public about the February 2009 mandatory transition to digital television (DTV) broadcasting. This shift will make the millions of analog TVs in U.S. households useless for over-the-air viewing without a DTV converter box. The resolution said the transition could hurt millions of viewers relying on over- the-air television as a primary or secondary video source.

The last Consumer Affairs resolution would ask the FCC to act “immediately and aggressively,” in concert with state regulators and business groups, to educate businesses on ways to spot frauds using Internet protocol-based relay services. The resolution notes high potential for criminals to use IP relay in frauds to get merchandise by deceit. IP relay frauds harm businesses, legitimate IP relay users and people who support relay services through phone bill surcharges, it said.

Panels during the meeting, which ends Wednesday, will cover universal service reform options, wireless spectrum policy issues, state role in broadband deployment, effects of IP-based networks on E-911 and public safety organizations and the effect on legacy telecom regulation of technological and market changes.