California telco deregulation bill amended, but not by much

15 August 2019 by Steve Blum
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Burlingame pole 8aug2019

The latest, but probably not the final, amendments to assembly bill 1366 are posted on the California legislature’s website. It’s the bill that would extend a current ban on regulation of “Internet protocol enabled” services, including, particularly, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service.

The new version does not address the core objection of telecoms labor unions and the California Public Utilities Commission. They say that because AT&T and Frontier are switching customers from regulated legacy telephone technology to unregulated VoIP service, extending the ban on VoIP regulation would effectively deregulate telephone service completely in California.

On the whole, the new amendments track with suggestions made in the most recent legislative committee analysis of AB 1366. The biggest change to the bill is to the extension itself: it’s now five years instead of ten. Another change is that telephone companies that have obligations to provide a basic level of voice service to anyone that wants it – AT&T is the biggest example – would still have to do that, even if they were using VoIP technology.

There’s still a requirement in the bill for residential VoIP providers to “initiate steps to restore service within 24 hours of receiving a report of a service outage” and complete the restoration within 72 hours, although there’s a long list of exceptions to the rule. Language was added to clarify 1. that the California attorney general “may” – not shall – “institute and prosecute actions or proceedings to enforce” the new rules, and 2. that the CPUC has no “jurisdiction or authority” in that regard.

Other changes require the CPUC to collect consumer complaints and forward them to the attorney general, and allow the California office of emergency services to set some 911 standards.

The Communications Workers of America, AT&T’s biggest union, is strongly opposed to the bill, and democratic lawmakers have been visibly uncomfortable with the idea of going against their wishes. Right now AB 1366 is in the hands of the senate’s appropriations committee, which will decide behind closed doors at the end of the month whether it moves forward or not.