Background

Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid evolution in the telecommunications industry, not only in the technology the industry employs but as well in its structure, the mix of services it provides, and the ways it provides those services. The Commission has for some time recognized that the ongoing shift to a more competitive telecommunications marketplace challenges it to find new methods to protect consumers. Toward that end, the Commission opened this rulemaking to consider whether to revise its existing consumer protection rules and/or establish new rules applicable to regulated telecommunications utilities.

The rulemaking order introduced a Commission staff report suggesting specific consumer protection measures, including a telecommunications consumers' bill of rights, rules to protect those rights, and changes to the industry's current tariffing and limitation of liability practices. Stakeholders were afforded numerous opportunities to submit comments on the proposed new consumer protection rules overall or various subsets of them during the more than four-year course of the proceeding. In response to then-recently enacted anti-cramming legislation, the Commission issued a set of interim rules in D.01-07-030 addressing non-communications related charges on telephone bills.¹ The Assigned Commissioner distributed his first draft decision proposing a new telecommunications bill of rights and consumer protection general order in June 2002 following nine opportunities for parties to submit comments and/or replies to comments. There followed four days of workshops, recommendations by a joint industry-consumer working group, and several more opportunities to comment before the Assigned Commissioner submitted a revised draft decision with proposed rules in July 2003. Following additional comments and replies, he revised and reissued it for further public and party comment in March 2004. By the time that draft, revised for yet more comments, and two alternate decisions by other commissioners were considered by the full Commission, industry and consumer representatives had had more than 20 opportunities for input on the proposed rules.

In May 2004, the Commission issued D.04-05-057 adopting General Order 168, Rules Governing Telecommunications Consumer Protection. G.O. 168 sets forth: in Part 1, a telecommunications consumers' Bill of Rights, the fundamental consumer rights that all communications service providers must respect; in Part 2, a set of Consumer Protection Rules all carriers must follow to protect those rights; in Part 3, a reserved section formerly addressing privacy rights; in Part 4, Rules Governing Billing for Non-communications-Related Charges; and in Part 5, Rules Governing Slamming Complaints.

D.04-05-057 did not implement the rulemaking order's proposal to have the new consumer protection rules replace tariffs for competitive telecommunications services. It did keep the proceeding open to consider whether the Commission should establish a privacy rule and a telecommunications consumer education program; whether to curtail the Commission-sanctioned limitation of liability; and whether additional rules requiring that communications directed at consumers and subscribers be in languages other than English are needed.