Cable Companies, CompTel Seek to Lobby FCC on Complaint Against Verizon
Five cable operators, CompTel, a state regulator and others want to lobby the FCC on a complaint that Verizon violated FCC porting rules. The proceeding involves allegations about actions by the Bell before moving a customer’s phone number to a new provider. The lobbying would depart from FCC practice and be inappropriate, Verizon said. The dispute is over whether those interested apart from formal parties may visit commissioners, their aides and Enforcement Bureau officials to weigh in on an action. Here, it’s the bureau’s April 11 recommended decision and the parties are the Bell and three cable operators. Verizon said it broke no rules, and the agency should say so and issue a notice on whether video and broadband customers can switch companies by having their new provider ask the old one to cut off service (CD April 15 p5).
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Supporters of a permit-but-disclose proceeding include Bright House Networks, Comcast and Time Warner Cable. They alleged that Verizon misused customer information by taking advantage of it to try to change the minds of phone customers defecting to cable phone service. Cablevision and Charter, which didn’t file a complaint, also want that kind of proceeding, and so do CompTel and the Broadband Service Providers Association, FCC filings show. The filings weren’t released by the agency, because the proceeding isn’t public. CompTel and others seek to make it public.
The FCC is considering requests to open the proceeding, a commission spokesman said. The FCC granted the cable operators’ request that their complaint go on a fast track, he said. “That means the commission has a limited amount of time to make a decision, but it also means the proceeding automatically becomes a restricted proceeding.” Verizon believes it should remain restricted, a company spokesman said. Any other course “would be an unprecedented move that would jeopardize the fairness of the proceeding,” he said.
The Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable made the latest request provided to us. The department asked the FCC to change its ex-parte procedures so “parties may provide their viewpoints on a novel question of law and policy that will affect all facilities-based telecommunications carriers.” That would ensure that the complaint is treated “in an open manner, without the need to comply with the cumbersome, restrictive requirements of the current procedure,” Sharon Gillett, department commissioner, wrote the FCC in a letter May 9. It will “benefit from a broader spectrum of views and open communications” because the FCC decision “will more broadly impact the competitive process” for broadband and video service and “have a significant impact on state regulation.”
Parties not directly involved in the complaint already take part by seeking permission to file amicus briefs to be served on the parties, an April 25 Verizon filing said. No one offered any explanation for why meetings with FCC officials without all parties present are needed, it said. “The commission has never allowed ex parte contacts in a formal complaint proceeding heard” by the bureau, Verizon said. “To do so would create an appearance of unfairness and raise substantial due process concerns.”
The commission denied a similar request in 2001, Verizon said. It urged Tuesday that commissioners approve the bureau’s recommendation. Its marketing method benefits customers by offering them discounts for sticking with Verizon, the company said. “Cable engages in the same form of retention marketing when a consumer chooses to disconnect,” it added. Critics’ complaints failed to show that the bureau misread section 222 of the 1996 Telecom Act in finding carriers have no duty to keep confidential their information on defecting customers, it said. The FCC should reverse the bureau decision, said Bright House, Time Warner Cable and Comcast. Doing otherwise would “turn this complaint proceeding into an occasion to make an ill- conceived change in the rules and reward Verizon’s decision to violate the law,” they added.
Cable overbuilders want to visit commissioners, aides and other FCC staffers to discuss the bureau decision’s effects, Broadband Service Providers Association Executive Director John Goodman said in an interview. “We'd like to do it right away, because we're in competition with Verizon, and we really want some clarity about what Verizon’s allowed to do,” said Goodman, whose members include Knology, RCN and SureWest. “We want to know where that’s going and participate in discussion and debate about it.”
Unless the FCC changes the proceeding from restricted to permit-but-disclose, no one other than the cable operators and Verizon has standing to weigh in, said Mary Albert, CompTel assistant general counsel. Others could seek to lobby FCC members with the complainants and Verizon present, but “I'm sure Verizon would strongly object to anyone else being there, and the commission would certainly have no obligation to notify us if there was going to be a meeting or to allow non-parties to participate,” she added. The FCC has 30 days to issue an order taking up the bureau’s recommendations once parties file final papers, due May 28, Albert said.