Consumer rules for Californian VoIP providers, but no particular cop proposed by new draft bill

22 May 2019 by Steve Blum
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AT&T’s attempt to dodge regulation of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service took a turn down an unmarked legal road on Monday. Assembly bill 1366 is championed by assembly member Lorena Gonzalez (D – San Diego). As now reads, it would add rules about repair windows and bill credits for VoIP service outages to California’s business and professions code, but doesn’t specify any particular agency or method to police those requirements.

Generally, consumer laws are enforced by the consumer affairs department, or the California attorney general, or local district attorneys, or private lawsuits. I expect the enforcement mechanism will be made clearer as the bill moves toward an assembly floor vote. The one thing that seems certain – with due regard for my lack of legal credentials – is that the California Public Utilities Commission won’t be the cop on the beat.

As currently written, the bill gives the CPUC a limited role in collecting information about VoIP outages and complaints, but that appears to be mainly for statistical purposes, with the data forwarded to the attorney general and the legislature annually.

The version Gonzalez originally introduced would have extended a moratorium on state level regulation of VoIP or other “Internet protocol-enabled services”, but it ran into a human wall of labor opposition during a committee hearing last month. That union presence overpowered endorsements from a long line of representatives from vaguely connected non-profit organisations and lobbyists from AT&T, Comcast, Charter and other big telecoms companies that 1. don’t want VoIP regulated and 2. often make less-than-charitable payments to such organisations. Gonzalez promised to amend the bill, and make it more to the liking of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the primary union representing AT&T field employees.

Theoretically, those amendments were made last week, when AB 1366 slid out of the assembly appropriations committee, which Gonzalez chairs. In reality, the changes were posted on Monday. Whether CWA or AT&T will be happy with the new version remains to be seen. The assembly has until the end of next week to act on it.