XI. General Order Review Committee

As discussed above, the General Order Review Committee ("Committee") was created in 1972 pursuant to D.80082 to "review the state of the art in telephony, to examine the measurements set forth in this General Order, and to suggest revisions, additions, and deletions to said measurements."⁹⁷ A Commission staff member serves as chairperson of the Committee. Telephone utilities are required members, and individuals or interested parties may represent the public on the Committee. The committee is required to meet at least once a year, record meeting minutes and report to the Commission when changes to the General Order are recommended.

We are informed by staff that the Committee has not met during the four years since R.98-06-029 was issued, because little value was seen in meeting while comments and recommendations submitted in that proceeding were pending Commission action. The Committee did not meet after D.00-03-052 was issued in R.98-06-029, because service quality was expected to be an issue under review in R.01-09-001/I.01-09-002.

When the Commission has previously considered changes to the service quality rules, utility representatives generally recommended eliminating measures or making minor "clarifying" changes to the rules. ⁹⁸ We also note that utility representatives have generally and consistently opposed staff recommendations to add new measures or tighten standards.

As discussed earlier, the carriers filing comments in R.98-06-029 generally recommended that, because of competition no service quality rules were needed, but if the Commission did not eliminate all service quality rules, then the existing rules were sufficient. We recognize that many of these carriers are the utilities represented on the Committee.

We believe the Committee has not proven as useful as the Commission originally expected it to be, and has not even met during the last several years. Therefore we propose to discontinue the Committee. We believe that, when changes are needed in the future to our service quality rules, adequate processes are still available to bring issues or recommendations to our attention. We seek comment on whether the Committee should be discontinued.