WASHINGTON—The Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday morning muddied the waters on wireless pre-emption by including stringent truth-in-billing requirements that would be determined by the Federal Communications Commission as part of a larger set of consumer protection rules.
The action, which passed by voice vote, does not appear to make either wireless carriers or state regulators happy.
Initially, an amendment was added to the Senate’s telecom-reform bill that would require the FCC to draft the larger protection rules. That effort was then amended to add several pages detailing what carriers can and cannot do regarding truth-in-billing practices. For example, the amendment would prohibit wireless carriers from charging administrative fees to process federal, state and local mandates and taxes. It would also end onerous early-termination fees.
The truth-in-billing amendment sprung out of debate over wireless pre-emption. Wireless pre-emption would prohibit states from regulating wireless service, leaving it to the federal government to do so. CTIA is lobbying for wireless pre-emption.
In more than an hour of debate, senators tried to nuance the wireless pre-emption language.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) started the debate by offering an amendment to strike the language.
In attempt to kill this, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, brought up an amendment by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) to require the Federal Communications Commission to adopt customer service and consumer-protection rules within one year.
This did not mollify Rockefeller.
“The FCC does not like to regulate,” said Rockefeller.
Stevens then allowed Rockefeller to include a truth-in-billing amendment if Rockefeller agreed to withdraw the amendment to strike the pre-emption language.
This did not make his Republican colleagues happy.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said it could have unintended consequences and urged the committee to wait for the FCC to issue the general regulations as called for by the Pryor amendment.
“I promise the FCC is going to do nothing to impede the wireless industry, but this will direct the FCC to protect consumers,” replied Rockefeller.
In a separate issue, the Senate Commerce Committee put in place a three-year moratorium on new state and local wireless-specific taxes.
The amendment does not appear to touch existing taxes.
The wireless industry has increasingly complained that states and localities are trying to balance their budgets by imposing taxes only on wireless that do not apply to other telecommunications services.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) was the lone senator to vote against the amendment.
Additionally, the Senate Commerce Committee passed a permanent moratorium on Internet access taxes which will also prohibit seven states that were taxing Internet access prior to the passage of the first moratorium several years ago.
The Internet access tax moratorium has been an ever-present issue since the high-tech community has been unable to pass a permanent moratorium settling instead for a series of temporary measures.
