WASHINGTON-An aide to California Public Utilities Commissioner Susan Kennedy said the regulator will offer an alternative bill of rights for telecom consumers that likely will exempt state mobile-phone carriers from new rules, raising the stakes in a controversy with national implications.
Ross Lajeunesse, an advisor to Kennedy, said the decision to take a completely different approach to telecom consumer protection was made Wednesday after the commissioner determined Commissioner Carl Wood-author of the bill of rights plan currently pending in the California PUC-was not going to make significant enough changes to satisfy her concerns.
The mobile-phone industry is vehemently opposed to the Wood initiative. Industry has spent hundreds of thousand of dollars and adopted a voluntary code of conduct in hopes of derailing the California proposal and discouraging other states from following suit.
The California PUC has postponed several scheduled votes on Wood’s bill of rights to give Kennedy and Commissioner Geoffrey Brown additional time to meet with industry representatives and consumer advocates on contentious issues.
Lajeunesse said consumer requirements for mobile-phone carriers make little sense in view of the Nov. 24 implementation of a federal mandate-supported by Kennedy-enabling subscribers to move from one carrier to another without surrendering their phone numbers. He said Kennedy has met personally with many wireless chief executives on the bill of rights matter and has been impressed with their presentations.
The Kennedy alternative will be put out for comment on a fast-track basis. Lajeunesse said Kennedy hopes to have the PUC vote on her measure before year’s end. Under commission protocol, both Wood’s bill of rights and the Kennedy alternative would be on the same agenda.
Reaction to Kennedy’s action was swift and direct.
Wood said he was not aware of Kennedy’s decision to offer an alternate bill of rights, but was not surprised.
Wood, calling her the most conservative commissioner on the five-member PUC, said Kennedy has “shown a willingness to accommodate the demands of business rather than consumers.”
Wood expressed confidence that he and Brown-the apparent swing vote in the bill-of-rights battle-can work out differences and arrive at a compromise they can both support. Commissioner Loretta Lynch is seen as being in Wood’s corner, while Commissioner Michael Peevey-president of the California PUC-will probably get behind the Kennedy plan.
A top consumer group in California downplayed Kennedy’s move.
“I think this will have little impact on the outcome. Commissioner Kennedy has not placed consumer protection as a high priority, so we didn’t expect her to support the bill of rights,” said Michael Shames, executive director of San Diego-based Utility Consumers’ Action Network. “We are confident that the majority of the commissioners will reject the notion that wireless carriers be exempted from the consumer protection rules that will be imposed upon all other telephone companies. So this report is more of a curiosity than a threat to the adoption of the rules.”
