Customs Duty

AT&T, Verizon and Qwest have been asked to give details on government efforts to get data on customer Internet and phone use, House Commerce Committee John Dingell, D-Mich., announced today. Dingell, Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Telecom Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, D-Mich., wrote to the carriers seeking responses by Oct. 12. Letters also went to privacy advocates, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology. “If reports about the government surveillance program are accurate, Congress has a duty to inquire about whether such a program violates the Constitution, as well as consumer protection and privacy laws,” said Dingell.” Stupak said he “will be interested to learn what leverage, pressure and arguments the Administration used in persuading these telecommunications carriers to release customers’ proprietary information.”

SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Public Utilities Commission is stirring the pot on state pay-TV franchising, leading players said. The commission will decide, probably in October or November, whether to require franchise holders to make detailed periodic reports of video subscriber numbers, Michael Morris, chief of the video franchising and broadband development group in the PUC communications division, told us. At a meeting of Women in Telecommunications Wednesday night, he expressed the view that the commission needs the data to enforce a new state franchise law’s ban on service discrimination. The PUC has taken up the matter in a second phase of rulemaking under a statute that took effect in January. Rules on buildouts by small incumbent telcos also are a part of the proceeding, Morris said.

AT&T in Ohio withdrew its request for the Public Utilities Commission to waive outage restoration standards for August. The carrier made the request because of severe weather in parts of its Ohio service area that month. The waiver (Case 00-1265-TP-ORD) would have removed AT&T’s duty to give customers bill credits for outages lasting longer than a day. When it filed for the waiver Aug. 23, AT&T said the governor had declared a state of emergency and the carrier had brought in extra resources to bring back service, but conditions made timely repairs difficult. In its withdrawal letter, AT&T said it decided to pay outage credits according to the service quality rules instead of pursuing the waiver.

GENEVA -- U.S. and Asian manufacturers and others are pressing to update the 1997 World Trade Organization agreement on a range of telephony, Internet, broadcast and data gear. The WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA) has boosted deployment of telecom and information technology products, said Mark MacGann, director general of the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association. However, it doesn’t cover consumer electronics. Convergence of information technology with consumer electronics has made it out of date, MacGann said.

The California Public Utilities Commission needs better ways to collecting fines levied against telecom carriers for violations, a state audit found. The state Comptroller’s Office launched the audit in early May after media reports that since 1999 the PUC had failed to collect telecoms fines totaling $32 million, about 10 percent of fines imposed during that time. Auditors said the PUC should fix its collection system “to safeguard not only the state’s limited resources, but also consumers who rely on the commission to protect their interests.” The audit faulted the PUC for inadequate reviews of the background and financial health of carriers applying for state operating authority, and for laxity in referring companies and individuals suspected of fraud to state law enforcement, particularly companies prosecuted for fraud in other states. The report faulted PUC accounting that made it hard to track the fate $126.5 million in fines collected since 1999. Fines collected by the PUC go to the general treasury. The audit report urged stringent PUC background checks on telecom applicants and mandate posting of a performance bond. It recommended that the PUC adopt formal methods for assigning collection duties to PUC divisions, and accounting controls to ensure that fines collected get into the PUC books. The PUC said it will open a case to set requirements for performance bonds to ensure carriers pay fines and make restitution to customers. The PUC is testing draft collection procedures, it said. Other major-market states like New York, Texas and Florida aren’t having these problems, staffers in those states said.

The FCC and NTIA should get cracking on their DTV transition duties, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Miss., said last week. In letters to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and NTIA Administrator John Kneuer, McCaskill said that since NTIA set no date by which manufacture of coupon-eligible boxes must start, “there is no guarantee boxes will be available for consumers to purchase January 1, 2008, when coupons will be available for consumers.” McCaskill asked NTIA to report on commitments from industry, and to details its plan for testing converter boxes, including field tests. “I am concerned that NTIA has not taken adequate steps to publicize the coupon program,” she said, asking that NTIA provide a month-by-month plan for promoting the coupon program and eligible converter boxes. NTIA needs to get broadcasters to air public service announcements on the program as soon as possible, the letter said. McCaskill made similar demands of the FCC, urging it to require broadcasters to run PSAs, with stipulations that a certain number air in periods of peak viewership. The FCC should move faster on rules for alerting consumers to the transition, including “strong reporting requirements to ensure that the PSA rules are followed,” she said. Satellite and cable should have to educate subscribers through bill inserts or other means, with the FCC setting a date and frequency for inserts, according to McCaskill. “I am also hopeful you will look closely at other proposals for cable and satellite providers to inform their customers,” she said.

AT&T has “moral obligations” to help copyright holders protect their content from illicit downloading, Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs, said at a Copyright Alliance event Tuesday. The company is developing a network-based filter for copyrighted content. Cicconi drew a connection between piracy and using AT&T’s network without paying what the company believes it is due for its investment. He was talking about efforts to hack to the iPhone to run on networks besides that of AT&T, the exclusive legal carrier.

The U.K. privacy czar Wednesday slammed corporate chiefs for failing to guard workers’ and customers’ personal data. Launching his annual report in London, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas branded as “frankly horrifying” breaches the past year involving mobile operator Orange, banks, government agencies, public bodies, retailers and others. How, he asked, can online recruitment agencies let applicants see one another’s forms, or let workers take unencrypted laptops holding customer account details from offices? He warned business and public officials to take their data protection duties more seriously or face enforcement actions and lose customer confidence.

A handful of phone companies urged the FCC to ban exclusive video deals between apartment buildings and pay-TV providers, as cable operators claimed the commission should not fix a system that is not broken. Neither argument in FCC filings earlier this week was novel. Both were notable for linking broadband access, an FCC priority, to sales of video to multiple-dwelling units (MDUs) and housing developments. Bells were most vocal in connecting increased availability of high-speed Internet service and competition in the market for pay-TV. Comcast, Time Warner Cable and other cable commenters said the FCC lacks authority to put the kibosh on contracts between building owners or homeowners associations and video providers (CD July 5 p11, June 29 p5).

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, a Democrat, signed a law easing state controls on telecom promotions by competitive local providers. Under SB-680, competitive carriers can pitch promotional offerings of tariffed services on one day’s notice to the Utilities Commission; no regulatory approval required. Promotions of competitive, nontariffed services can launch at any time without notice. For any promotion that must be made available for resale, the law requires that affected resellers get notice of the promotion at least a business day before the promotion starts. The law lets competitive carriers offer promotions and new service bundles with no duty to convert existing customers of similar services to the new offering.