Civil Rights Groups, Others Push for Consumer Protections in Tech Transitions
Civil rights groups and others asked the FCC to do more to protect consumers as telecom carriers migrate from traditional phone services to IP-based, broadband technologies. The advocates said "high quality, affordable and reliable voice and high-speed broadband services" should be provided to all Americans and consumer protection maintained during the technology transitions. Separately, incumbent telcos pressed for streamlined regulatory treatment in tariffing and discontinuing legacy voice services. They were among the parties lobbying the commission last week as it plans, at its Thursday meeting, to consider a tech transitions item taking various actions (see 1606240069).
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Civil rights, public interest and labor groups said "vulnerable users" must be protected during and after the transition. "Universal service, public safety, network reliability, and consumer protection" precepts "remain as relevant in an IP network as they do in the current system," said the members of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and others in a filing posted Friday in docket 13-5. The groups were: the Benton Foundation, Communications Workers of America, Common Cause, National Consumer Law Center (on behalf of its low-income clients), National Hispanic Media Coalition, United Church of Christ, Appalshop, Kentucky Resources Council, Center for Media Justice, Center for Rural Strategies and The Greenlining Institute.
The groups urged the FCC to uphold "affordability" and other values as legacy telecom services are retired through discontinuance filings under Section 214 of the Communications Act. "If a replacement service is much more expensive, it is not an adequate replacement to a legacy service, particularly for low-income people," they said. The advocates also urged commission actions ensuring consumer education notice, Lifeline USF availability, internet access, consumer-impact assessments when carriers seek streamlined treatment, and adequate public comment on and FCC review of streamlined discontinuance applications.
CWA and Public Knowledge highlighted several of the same themes in meetings with aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Mike O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel. They backed FCC efforts to facilitate the transition to advanced networks by clarifying the procedures for evaluating streamlined applications to discontinue legacy voice TDM (time-division multiplexing) services. They also called the commission's proposed "adequate replacement" criteria consistent with enduring public interest values.
But CWA and PK voiced concern about "several aspects" of the proposed item. "The Commission should require carriers to certify there is a broadband provider in the service area prior to discontinuing service," said a filing on one meeting. "Second, the Commission should ensure that there is an adequate public comment period for a 214(a) discontinuance, and suggested 60 days for comment and 30 days for reply comments. Third, the Commission should include affordability of the 'adequate replacement' as part of the application when a legacy TDM voice carrier applies for streamlined treatment. Fourth, where the carrier terminating TDM service is the only Lifeline provider in the service area, the Commission should require that an exiting provider first find an alternative Lifeline provider to ensure affordable service.”
About 80 percent of ILECs' phone customer base has "already voted with their feet" on the affordability issue, as consumers have chosen replacement wireless, cable VoIP and other Internet voice services "in droves," USTelecom Senior Vice President Jon Banks told us. He's hopeful the FCC, as part of the tech transitions item, will grant USTelecom's 2012 petition seeking nondominant carrier treatment for its members' interstate traditional phone services, which have less than 20 percent of the voice market, he said. The petition would give ILECs streamlined treatment -- shorter waiting periods, less up-front cost-support duties -- when filing tariffs for these services or discontinuing them, he said.
AT&T cited concerns and proposals for streamlining the discontinuance process as carriers move from traditional phone services over copper networks to IP-based broadband/voice services over fiber and wireless systems (see 1606010046). In a filing on one of two meetings with four commissioner aides in total, the telco said an FCC network performance latency requirement for replacement voice services should be no lower than 200 milliseconds "mouth to ear." A 100 ms threshold for ISPs in the Connect America Fund Phase II order wasn't appropriate in the Section 214 discontinuance context because it would exclude wireless service as a replacement service, an "absurd result," said AT&T. Verizon said any additional discontinuance criteria should be technology neutral and "limited to the proposed streamlined process" for halting voice services, and providers should retain the option of using the existing process.
The FCC should narrowly focus on updating its rules for the tech transition, not use technological evolution as an "excuse to rewrite rules in broad and sweeping ways that actually create uncertainty and thus undermine innovation," said an NTCA filing summarizing meetings with FCC officials. "NTCA also raised concerns regarding the use of technology transitions as a vessel to impose new regulatory requirements where none existed previously.”