On tap in Washington: Another attempt at a wireless consumer protection bill: Debate continues over whether regulation of wireless should be a federal or state issue

House telecom subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) reportedly plans to craft a wireless consumer protection bill this year, an effort likely to reignite a debate over the role of states in a new national regulatory framework. At the same time, the Government Accounting Office is conducting interviews with eye toward issuing a report later this year on wireless service quality and related issues.
House and Senate lawmakers have pursued a variety of wireless consumer protection bills in recent years, with the issue of state jurisdiction a flashpoint in the measures.
“A set of national standards for consumer protection for the users of cellular telephone services would be a key component of the measure,” Boucher told CongressDaily AM, a publication of the National Journal. “The standards have to be, I think, very meaningful.”
Boucher described the yet-to-be-written wireless consumer bill as a long-term objective aimed at updating similar legislation drafted last year by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who relinquished his long-held chairmanship of the telecom panel to lead the Commerce subcommittee on energy and the environment. The Markey draft directed the FCC to develop a national policy for wireless consumer protection that states would enforce, but stopped short of eviscerating a provision in a 1993 law that reserved to states oversight of terms and conditions of commercial wireless service.
Likewise, a wireless consumer bill co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) does not preempt state regulation of wireless providers.
In contrast, a bill championed by Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) would do just that as part of a new federal wireless consumer protection regime. As such, the mobile-phone industry has supported Pryor’s approach over others to date.
It is unclear to what extent Boucher will draw on the Markey draft as he attempts to put his on imprint on wireless consumer protection legislation. Boucher’s aides were not immediately available for comment.
Consumer and public-interest groups want to see states remain in a position to step in when consumers lodge complaints about wireless service and business practices of service providers. However, state regulators have differences over precisely how much power they should wield if national consumer protection guidelines were adopted.
Any move to fashion wireless consumer protection legislation likely will not play out significantly until late summer or fall, given other legislative priorities – including universal service fund reform – on Boucher’s agenda.