The Return Of California's Telco Bill Of Rights

from the self-regulation-ain't-working-apparently dept

Thu, Dec 29th 2005 12:56am — Mike Masnick

A year and a half ago, California passed a "Cellular Bill of Rights" to help protect consumers against some of the more questionable practices of mobile operators. The operators, of course, were not pleased. They claimed that self-regulation would keep the operators honest -- but years of hidden fees, unwillingness to fix dead spots (even when at home) and various systems to lock up customers in long term contracts even when service can't be provided suggests that self-regulation has failed in many areas. Still, a year ago, California tore up the cellular bill of rights, after the carriers challenged it. However, a year has gone by and apparently the "self-regulation" still isn't doing much, because we've now got a new California Telco Bill of Rights being proposed. It would create a special unit of about thirty people, whose only job would be to investigate consumer complaints about fraudulent practices by telcos. Not only that, but since this would cover all telcos (not just mobile operators), the proposed bill would also enforce network neutrality while requiring telcos to offer DSL without phone service (naked DSL). While this sounds like a very reasonable proposal, it's still a bit troublesome that this is only being set on a state level. The risk is that telcos suddenly have to abide by 50 different sets of regulations, one from every state. It would make a lot more sense to set something like this up at the national level to keep the telco oligopoly under control -- but our current FCC seems to simply roll over when it comes to telcos.

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Jeff R, 29 Dec 2005 @ 8:18am

No Subject Given
The risk is that telcos suddenly have to abide by 50 different sets of regulations in every state.

Well, I don't think it's likely to be 50 per state. =)

But I do see the possibility of various local government entities passing something similar if their state is slow about passing something...
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Erick Erickson, 29 Dec 2005 @ 8:25am

Net Neutrality
I think net neutrality is going to be the most cumbersome thing to regulate. I, for one, have less and less problems with the idea that broadband providers may give their own content some sort of priority over their own network -- as long as they don't intentionally slow or disrupt other data transmissions.

The concept is, on the surface, sound, but the deeper you go, the more problems there are and the more lobbyists there are.
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Mike (profile), 29 Dec 2005 @ 9:26am

Re: No Subject Given
Well, I don't think it's likely to be 50 per state. =)

Heh. Whoops, that was worded awkwardly. :) Thanks for pointing it out. I tried to clear it up.
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Mark, 29 Dec 2005 @ 10:38am

state and federal
Myself, I'm more comfortable with regulation on the state level. Sure, it causes some complexity problems for the cellular companies, but we're talking massive conglomerates here -- I think they can find it in their budget to hire a compliance officer or two. Meanwhile, we've already seen that Congress and th FTC are categorically unable to regulate such things impartially; inevitably there's some powerful lobby whispering in their ears, and in many cases actually drafting the legislation. While those forces also operate on the state level, my gut-level feeling is that a state senator is going to be closer to his consituents and therefore somewhat more likely to act in their interests.
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