Ohio Senate Softens Telecom Dereg Bill, But More Changes Demanded
Yielding to complaints by consumer advocates, including Ohio’s Office of Consumers Counsel, members of the state Senate softened provisions in a telecom deregulation bill. But SB-162 continues to draw fire from Consumers Counsel Janine Migden-Ostrander and others, who say they'll keep up the pressure on the Senate. The opponents also plan to lean harder on the Ohio House, which has a version of the measure, for changes, they said. The state’s telcos defend the measure as reflecting a trend by states to deregulate phone services.
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Migden-Ostrander scorned the amended Senate bill as a “net loss” for Ohio consumers. She said in an interview that the revised measure would reduce protections they have now. “It’s as if I have a bowl of candy three-quarters full,” Migden-Ostrander said. “I want it 100 percent full, but I'm willing to live with 75 percent. Now they've taken away the whole bowl and they're offering me a few pieces -- maybe 25 or 30 percent. If that’s what the legislators want to do, they have to give consumers something to make up for that.”
Among provisions that still rankle, the state consumer advocate pointed to one that would bar unfair and deceptive promotional practices “except when not practicable,” with the state utility commission making the call on exceptions. But the bill doesn’t say whether the commission would review promotions in advance or limited to catching misconduct after the fact, Migden-Ostrander said. “Yes, the commission would have jurisdiction that it doesn’t have now, but it’s not clear how enforcement would take place.”
Originally the bill proposed to set the basic service deposit at 300 percent of the average monthly charge, a level that the consumer alliance denounced as punitive. The rewrite sets the deposit at 230 percent, but Migden-Ostrander and her allies, including more than 45 consumer, senior and low-income groups such as the NAACP, want it sliced to 130 percent. “That’s what the gas and electric utilities get,” she said.
The bill at first proposed to do away with automatic credits for loss of phone service unless a consumer called the telco to request a credit after service was restored. Now it says that to get a credit, customers losing service must have reported the outage. “That means that if a residential block loses phone service and one of the neighbors contacts the company, only the neighbor who called will get a credit,” Migden-Ostrander said. She wants to keep the current 72-hour deadline on telcos to restore service or provide credits. “Without that inducement telephone companies are not going to make repairs a priority, and they may do as electric utilities have done and reduce the number of crews they have on the street.”
Migden-Ostrander criticized the effort needed to persuade senators to restructure the bill’s proposed select Senate committee on telecom reform to include her office along with representatives from industry and the utility commission. “It’s amazing to me that they do this stuff,” she said.
The bill would create a Lifeline program advisory committee, but it calls only vaguely for industry to pay for the body, with no budget set, Migden-Ostrander said. She acknowledged that senators rewrote a passage ordering a Lifeline surcharge so it now would exempt Lifeline customers from the add-on intended to help subsidize their discounts.
Migden-Ostrander had harsh words for senators’ rewrite of a disputed section on phone rates. “The original language would have allowed phone companies to raise their rates $1.25 a month every 12 months,” she said. “Now they need to submit proposed increases to the utility commission 30 days in advance and show that in the exchange involved there are at least two providers offering service. But one of those companies could have three customers or only 10 percent of the exchange, and that would be enough to deem the exchange competitive. This limit is more minimal than the four-point test that we have now. It’s a hoop that everyone can jump through.”
Overall the revised bill would leave customers worse off than under current law, Migden-Ostrander said. The amended Senate bill would create “a two-tier system of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in consumer protections,” she said. Customers with basic service would get “some explicit protections” but there would be “significantly less” protection for buyers of bundled services, Migden-Ostrander said. To make up for those setbacks, she and her allies want the bill to declare a state commitment to advance broadband adoption, to provide community voice mail services for needy consumers and to building community computer centers, she said.
Republican Sen. Steve Buehrer, the bill’s sponsor, said its passage Tuesday by his colleagues marks a step toward updating what he called his state’s “antiquated” telecom laws. “SB-162 would put an end to many of the burdensome and unnecessary regulatory requirements for telephone companies to operate in Ohio, which will allow them to boost investment, create jobs and expand telephone and broadband services throughout the state,” he said. “At the same time, the bill also carefully preserves many key protections for Ohio consumers.”