Debate Over Notice Provisions Stalls Interim Lifeline Order
Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps have dug in and are fighting for expanded notice requirements in a pending interim Lifeline order, FCC 8th floor officials told us. Chairman Julius Genachowski’s staff has been circulating an interim order since late May hoping to address duplicate Lifeline claims (CD June 9 p14). The order would automatically cancel extra payments and assign recipients to a single eligible telecommunications carrier. Under the proposed order, customers who are receiving more than one Lifeline subsidy will be assigned a carrier based by lot, with eligible carriers in a given area literally divvying up customers, FCC and industry officials said.
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Clyburn and Copps are worried that the interim order won’t give enough notice to recipients, FCC officials said. Under the plan, a recipient would receive a letter telling them they had been receiving duplicate payments and that their benefits had been cut to a single telco. If the recipient doesn’t want the designated telco to provide his or her Lifeline service, they will be able to call a toll-free number to change the provider. The Democratic commissioners aren’t sure that’s enough to protect the interest of Lifeline customers, FCC and industry officials told us.
The FCC is considering an overhaul of the entire Lifeline program. As part of the reform, commission staff have been putting Lifeline subscribers’ information into a massive database. They've discovered that numerous beneficiaries are receiving duplicate -- and sometimes quadruplicate -- benefits, industry and commission officials said. The interim order targets at least a dozen states, including Florida and Tennessee, which have the highest amounts of duplicate subsidies, industry and FCC officials said.
Industry has jumped into the fray, according to a joint ex parte notice filed and released Monday. CenturyLink, General Communication and CTIA all met with FCC staff -- including Zac Katz, aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski -- to lobby against a provision in the notice section that “may include the specific rate the customer will be charged,” Wiltshire & Grannis telco lawyer John Nakahata wrote in an ex parte notice filed for all three parties. “The Commission should not adopt such a requirement, which goes far beyond the requirements in place today when a carrier is required to de-enroll a Lifeline subscriber (such as when the subscriber fails to respond to a request for eligibility verification),” the notice said.
"The Commission has been down this road before,” Nakahata said in the joint ex parte notice. “When it tried to prohibit ETCs from disconnecting a Lifeline subscriber for non-payment of intrastate toll charges, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the FCC exceeded its jurisdiction,” Nakahata said, referring to the Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel v. FCC case from 1999. “In addition, any such requirement to inform individuals who signed up for two Lifeline services of the rate for continuing the non-Lifeline service would be an information collection requiring approval by the Office of Management and Budget pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act,” Nakahata wrote. “There is no reason for the FCC to mandate specific procedures here that are different from those that carriers are already using in analogous situations.”
"Finally,” Nakahata added, “were the Commission to mandate disclosure of specific no-discounted rates, that could be complex and burdensome. Lifeline rates are not necessarily uniform throughout a state, as the amount of both the local rate and Lifeline discounts can vary among different exchange areas within a state.”