WASHINGTON-California Public Utility Commission members Carl Wood and Geoffrey Brown said they will try to enlist support of the media and public for a bill of rights for telecom consumers, a strategy that comes as a vote on the controversial initiative approaches and as backing for the proposed rule emerges from influential interest groups representing retired people and Hispanics.
Wood and Brown said they plan to meet with editorial boards of California newspapers in coming weeks.
“I want to get across what we’re trying to do … We’ve got to be able to protect the public,” said Brown.
Brown and Wood, who have the votes to pass the bill of rights but lack backing from Sacramento, appear anxious to lock in public support as a final showdown approaches. Clearly, media and public support for a bill of rights would make it more difficult for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) to flex his political muscle and assist industry in opposing the proposal.
The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association has spent more than $500,000 on California lobbyists in hopes of derailing the measure and keeping it from becoming a template for other states.
Wireless carriers argue there is a better alternative: market forces and self-policing.
“Competition is working. Californians are getting the services they want at the rates they want. There is no need to impose on the wireless industry a set of restrictive, costly rules which … will severely undermine the progress which has been made by the wireless carriers in the past few years,” the Cellular Carriers Association of California told the PUC last week.
But AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, said industry’s voluntary code of conduct for carriers is vague, unenforceable and lacks privacy protections.
“If any carrier fails to abide by these vague promises, there is no sanction. In order to make this code or any code meaningful, a regulatory agency must adopt it and enforce it,” said AARP in a PUC filing last week.
Newspaper editorials generally have been favorable to the bill-of-rights plan to date.
But months have passed since those editorials ran, owing to delays that have enabled PUC members to gather more data from consumer groups and the mobile-phone industry. Wireless carriers oppose a revised bill of rights crafted by Wood and Brown, while consumer advocates complain state regulators have conceded too much to industry in negotiations.
Now, after months of delay and further refinements in response to carriers’ concerns, a vote on the bill of rights may be on the horizon.
Brown said he recently talked about the revised bill of rights with one of Schwarzenegger’s aides, who expressed concern about any potential economic impact of such a rule. California mobile-phone carriers claim passage of the telecom consumer measure would cost California jobs, a huge issue that dominated the gubernatorial recall campaign last year and continues to dog Schwarzenegger to this day.
“I told the governor’s office I’ll work with them,” said Brown. “There’s been a lot of tweaking, and we can do more.”
The proposed bill of rights, which imposes new rules on wireless carriers and forces them to provide greater disclosure to consumers, is scheduled for vote April 22.
But Wood said he does not expect a vote until May in deference to a six-month regulatory moratorium enacted last November by Schwarzenegger immediately after taking office. The PUC is not bound by that directive, but commissioners chose to honor it nonetheless.
If other PUC commissioners continue to delay voting on the measure, the three commissioners on the five-member PUC who support the initiative-Wood, Brown and Loretta Lynch-could force a vote.
Meantime, Brown said he would hold an all-parties meeting later this month to quiz industry representatives on precisely how a bill of rights for telecom consumers would damage the California economy.
The Latino Issues Forum told the PUC not only are telecom consumer protections needed but educating the public about them is as important “since they will mean little if customers are unaware of their rights.”
“Now is the time to act without further delay. We … urge swift action to protect the large percentage of limited-English speaking consumers,” said the Latino group. RCR
