The Ala. PSC called for comments by Oct. 31 on whether voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) service is a telephone service. The investigation into the status of VoIP (Case 29016) was the PSC’s response to a petition by a group of incumbent telcos that sought a declaratory ruling stating that VoIP providers were telephone carriers subject to the same certification, tariffing, 911 and access charge rules as other local exchange providers. The Minn. PUC last month ruled that VoIP service provided by Vonage Holdings was a telephone service.

While witnesses representing state and local wireless interests all praised the House Telecom Subcommittee at a hearing Thurs. for addressing deficiencies in E911 deployment, all said there should be some changes in legislation (HR-2898) designed to facilitate its deployment. The bill, by Rep. Shimkus (R-Ill.), would authorize $100 million in spending over 5 years, penalize states that diverted E911 funding, create an E911 office in NTIA and direct the FCC to review E911 accuracy requirements for rural areas.

The Utah PSC called for comment by Sept. 24 on proposed rules to protect customers when telecom carriers plan to terminate service and exit the state. The rules would require an exiting carrier to notify the PSC at least 50 days before its departure. It would have to give the same advance notice to the state Div. of Public Utilities, each 911 district, carriers that provided underlying facilities via resale or unbundling and the national numbering administrator. The carrier would have to give customers at least 30 days’ notice and provide them with a list of alternative providers. The company would have to provide an oral notice to customers of intent to terminate during the final 15 days of its service. If the exiting carrier controlled the only facilities for providing basic service, it must give 120 days’ notice to the PSC and other local exchange carriers, giving the other carriers 40 days to express their intent to take over the departing carrier’s facilities.

The Cal. legislature passed 3 telecom bills and sent them to Gov. Gray Davis (D). The first (SB-911) would create an appointed 10-member state 911 Advisory Board within the Telecom Div. of the Cal. Dept. of General Services. The board would develop, approve and implement 911 policies of the Cal. Emergency Communications Office, develop training standards for local 911 systems and review all matters relating to the Cal. Emergency Number Account. The 2nd measure (AB-909) would require carriers that provided packages of local and long distance services to itemize usage and charges for each component service separately on phone bills. Carriers also would have to provide customers with usage data for the current month upon request. The 3rd bill (AB-1389) would require the Cal. PUC to compile information about hiring practices of telecom, energy and other utilities to help determine whether utilities operating in the state had employed Cal. residents in proportion to the utilities’ Cal. customer base. The PUC is to collect certain data and report its findings annually to the legislature.

State regulators face tough choices in deciding regulatory treatment for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers and can’t necessarily forgo action on the ground that VoIP is a nascent technology, NARUC Gen. Counsel Brad Ramsay said on a Cato Institute panel on regulating Internet telephony Tues. The basic question remains whether a VoIP provider such as Vonage is a telecom service, he said. If a state PUC decides Vonage isn’t providing telecom service, “it can’t then go back when the service reaches a 50% market share, if it ever does, and say we made a mistake, we should regulate,” Ramsay said. A regulator can’t “knock himself out of the game” like that, he said. Whether VoIP providers like it or not, if they are providing telephony service they have obligations under the law to provide such things as 911 capability, universal service funding, network reliability and access to law enforcement agencies, Ramsay said. A decision last month by the Minn. PUC subjecting Vonage to wireline regulation (CD Sept 9 p5) was “the tip of the iceberg” on the issue of state regulation, said Scott Marcus, the FCC’s senior adviser for Internet technology, also a panelist at the forum. “It would be nice if someone at the FCC spoke up and preempted the states,” said Internet consultant Jeff Pulver, also a panelist. Regulators should reform “outdated carrier compensation and universal service regulations” before applying them to VoIP, AT&T Internet & E-Commerce Dir. Marilyn Cade said. “Regulators need to be aware that if they do something to Voice-over-IP they might impede the development of other applications,” she said. Verizon Internet specialist Link Hoewing said the problem was that when regulators in Minn. looked at Vonage it looked like a telephony service, “with dial tone, all the features of a regular phone service.” Marcus noted, however, that applying tariff and certification requirements on Vonage, which would require it to incur the cost of retaining lawyers for a very small customer base in Minn., “might result in Vonage withdrawing from the state.” Hoewing said he didn’t advocate economic price regulation of VoIP providers but as the technology matures, states should address those issues. He said an AT&T petition asking the FCC to free its phone-to- phone IP services from the access charges regime was different: “AT&T’s petition is an end run around access charges.” Ramsay said he agreed: “There is no reason not to call what AT&T is doing telecommunications.”

Advocates of Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) telephony urged state regulators and lawmakers to keep their hands off that still-emerging technology until its perils and promises were more fully realized. They said applying telephone-style regulation to VoIP would be premature now.

Current federal govt. systems for coordinating spectrum management between agencies and private users need to be revamped, said Joel Szabat, Dept. of Transportation (DoT) deputy asst. secy.-transportation policy. DoT is participating with other federal spectrum users in an interagency task force created by President Bush in June to recommend how to stimulate more efficient govt. use. The challenge is how to balance safety-of-life systems such as GPS and public safety while making room for new technology, Szabat said. “We want to protect those needs and still allow for the robust development of new commercial technology,” he told us in an interview.

A CTIA voluntary consumer code of conduct set to be unveiled in Washington next week will cover 10 points, including rate disclosure to customers, coverage maps and a 14-day trial period. The Cellular Carriers Assn. of Cal. (CCAC) outlined the industry-devised consumer protection guidelines in comments to the Cal. PUC last week. CTIA is set to announce the plan formally on Tues., but hasn’t released it publicly. The Cal. industry group filed comments on the state’s “consumer bill of rights,” sponsored by PUC Comr. Carl Wood, which would impose on all telecom providers obligations involving disclosure of service terms and conditions, bill readability, privacy and other issues. CTIA has scheduled a news briefing on its code for Tues. A CTIA spokeswoman confirmed Thurs. that the 6 largest national wireless carriers had signed onto the plan. CCAC said the plan would require carriers that signed on to it to make available to subscribers detailed information on rates and terms of its plans. It also said the code would have carriers commit to: (1) Disclose rates and terms of service to consumers, including a plan’s calling area, monthly access fee or base charge, early termination fees that applied. (2) Make coverage maps available, allowing consumers to make comparisons between operators by using generally accepted methodologies and standards. (3) Provide contract terms to customers and confirm service changes. (4) Offer a 14-day trial period for new service during which no penalties would be assessed for early termination. (5) Provide specific disclosures in ads on key terms of services, covering areas such as whether different fees applied to calls outside a carrier’s network. (6) Make billing clear, including drawing a distinction between charges that were taxes and fees that carriers had been ordered to collect, compared with those a carrier levied to recover a cost of doing business. “Carriers will not label cost-recovery fees or charges as taxes,” the plan said. (7) Give customers a right to terminate service for changes in contract terms. Given advance notice of a proposed contract change, customers would have 14 days to cancel without an early termination fee. (8) Provide ready access to customer service, including a toll- free number for customers to call. (9) Make prompt responses to customer inquiries and complaints received from govt. agencies. Carriers would respond within 30 days of receiving written customer complaints from a state or federal agency. (10) Abide by policies for protection of customer privacy. CCAC told the PUC it “would be well advised to allow the wireless industry the time to implement its self-determined code. The results achieved will be comparable to those desired by the Commission but they will be achieved faster and with a great deal less expense and disruption to the California economy.” The group said the proposed Cal. rules would add “layers of regulation in areas already well protected by state and/or federal law.” It said the rules “contain many examples of a one-size-fits-all mentality which would saddle the industry with a series of overly restrictive operating procedures which are unnecessary and, in the long run, harmful to consumers.” Several state regulators, including NARUC leaders, have pointed out shortcomings in the CTIA plan, including a failure to address issues such as Enhanced 911 or local number portability (CD Aug 29 p7). NARUC said last month that CTIA’s code didn’t fully factor in principles that NARUC approved at its summer meetings in Denver, including certain carrier billing practices (CD Aug 28 p8).

The House Telecom Subcommittee scheduled a hearing on E- 911 for Thurs., Sept. 11, at 9:30 a.m. No witness list was released, but the hearing will focus on HR-2898, by Rep. Shimkus (R-Ill.), that’s designed to facilitate implementation of E-911 technology.

The Rural Telecom Group (RTG) asked the FCC for a limited stay of Enhanced 911 Phase 2 deadlines for the smallest wireless carriers, saying accuracy requirements couldn’t be met by most rural operators using a network-based solution for Phase 2. RTG suggested the Commission set up a new category, Tier 4, composed of the smallest wireless carriers, or those with 100,000 or fewer subscribers. The smallest category for Phase 2 deployment now used by the FCC is Tier 3, which covers carriers with 500,000 or fewer customers. “Because of the typical separation of cellsites in rural areas, small rural wireless carriers cannot accomplish the triangulation necessary to meet Phase 2 accuracy requirements absent the cost and time-consuming construction of additional cell sites,” RTG said in a petition for waiver and request for temporary limited stay of part of the E911 rules filed Fri. RTG sought a limited waiver of accuracy requirements for the smallest carriers operating in rural markets with low cellsite density. The petition asked that: (1) Tier 4 carriers in markets with fewer than 3 cellsites in a licensed service area carriers be allowed to meet the accuracy requirements within 2 years of a public safety answering point (PSAP) request for service. (2) Carriers with 3 or more cellsites with low tower density be given 2 years from a PSAP request to meet the accuracy standards, as long as they agreed to deploy Phase 2 technology under a proposed schedule. The RTG request came as several senators urged FCC Chmn. Powell to grant E911 relief to rural carriers, saying the accuracy requirements were too difficult to meet. Sens. Brownback (R-Kan.), Baucus (D-Mont.), Allen (R-Va.) and others said they strongly supported forbearance for rural markets (CD Aug 25 p7). The RTG filing also came amid a flurry of petitions to the FCC in recent weeks seeking temporary waivers of E911 Phase 2 obligations, particularly a Sept. 1 deadline for starting to sell automatic location identification (ALI)-capable handsets. For carriers relying on a handset-based solution for Phase 2 accuracy requirements, RTG said there were no handsets currently available to meet the FCC’s deployment benchmarks. “Carriers relying on a handset solution to achieve Phase 2 accuracy require a temporary waiver of these benchmarks until the necessary handsets become available,” RTG said. It said certain CDMA carriers formerly had relied on a TDMA solution, but manufacturers had decided to discontinue development of ALI-capable handsets for TDMA networks. For those carriers, RTG said a 12-month extension of the handset deployment benchmarks was needed. For Tier 4 carriers with a CDMA solution who hadn’t received a PSAP request for Phase 2 service, the filing sought a waiver of the Phase 2 data delivery requirements because the necessary handsets weren’t available. For Tier 4 carriers using a GSM handset solution, RTG said more time was needed “due to the projected unavailability of such handsets until late next year at the earliest.” Those carriers should have another 2 years to meet handset benchmarks, it said. As another option for relief, RTG suggested the FCC link various handset deployment deadlines to the receipt of a PSAP request.