ALJ/XJV/tcg Mailed 3/14/2003

Decision 03-03-022 March 13, 2003

BEFORE THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

The Greenlining Institute, Latino Issues Forum, Complainants, vs. Pacific Bell, Pacific Bell Information Services, Defendants.

Case 99-01-039 (Filed January 27, 1999)

OPINION ON REQUEST FOR INTERVENOR COMPENSATION

This decision awards The Greenlining Institute and Latino Issues Forum (jointly GLIF) $229,785.34 in compensation for substantial contributions to Decision (D.) 01-04-037. This award reflects a discount of claimed professional hours in light of our denial in D.01-04-037 of GLIF's allegations of unlawful conduct but in acknowledgment that GLIF brought problems with the voicemail service offering to our attention, developed the factual record, and recommended remedies that we adopted.

1. Background

In D.01-04-037 we denied GLIF's complaint but ordered Pacific Bell Telephone Company (Pacific) and Pacific Bell Information Services (PBIS) (jointly Defendants) to revise their tariffs and bill format to create clearer references and cross-references to call forwarding and the business line usage charges associated with the use of voicemail. Specifically, we ordered Defendants to provide greater clarity in their tariffs in the areas of necessary and optional call forwarding services, including capitalizing terms that are the names of services Pacific and PBIS offer and that are described in other tariffs, clarifying the distinction between generic call forwarding available from competitive local carriers and Pacific's call forwarding service, and referencing the message retrieval process. We also required Defendants to disclose up-front all business line usage charges in voicemail promotions and sales contacts, to use clear and unambiguous language in all such disclosures, to ensure future training of customer service representatives on business line usage charges is consistently comprehensive, and to disclose usage charges when a customer applies, moves, or changes voicemail service. We also directed Defendants to revise their bill format to include a statement that the direct-dialed total includes business line usage charges and whether the voicemail monthly charge includes call forwarding.

GLIF timely filed its Request for Compensation on June 18, 2001. GLIF filed Errata to its Request on August 7, 2001. Pacific filed a response to the Request and an objection to the Errata. On October 11, 2002 GLIF filed an Amendment to the Request. Pacific filed a response to the Amendment on November 8, 2002.