AUSTIN, Nov. 10- State consumer advocates discussed their efforts today to ensure that the telecommunications networks remain “reliable, redundant, and resilient” during the Internet protocol (IP) transition and said that often times they are not getting a lot of help from state commissions.

The discussion was held today during the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates’ (NASUCA) annual meeting being held here this week in conjunction with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ (NARUC) meeting.

Stefanie Brand, director of the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel, said that consumer advocates in New Jersey petitioned the Board of Public Utilities seeking an investigation into Verizon New Jersey, Inc.’s copper-to-fiber transition in the state and alleging that the company may not be in compliance with state law and the FCC’s recent technology transition order, but the commission has yet to act on the petition.

The Rate Counsel on June 29 filed a petition urging the BPU to conduct an investigation and issue Verizon a “cease and desist” to prevent the company from disconnecting any customer or switching any customer who has not agreed to the change from copper to fiber, pending the outcome of the investigation.  The Rate Counsel in late August sent a follow-up letter to the BPU urging action from the state commission.

Ms. Brand said that Verizon is trying to force customers to switch to fiber and the Rate Counsel is getting complaints that the company is only giving customers 30 days to arrange to switch their service or face disconnection.  Verizon is also telling customers the updated service will be offered at the same price, but doesn’t say how long that rate will last, she said.

“Customers are calling us and saying that they feel incredibly bullied by Verizon and that they are confused,” Ms. Brand said. “They don’t want their service to go out when power goes out.  Some have been disconnected.  Some have switched over and are still having problems.  So we have a petition before BPU asking them to take a look at these issues, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Meanwhile, Simon ffitch, public counsel, Washington Office of Attorney General, said that his office is advocating for the Utilities and Transportation Commission to impose a much larger fine on CenturyLink for the April 9, 2014 “sunny day” 911 outage.  Centurylink and UTC staff entered a settlement under which the company will pay a fine of about $2.8 million, but the public counsel wants the company to receive the maximum penalty of about $11.5 million, or $1,000 per violation, Mr. ffitch said today.

He said his office has discovered numerous calls in Washington that were impacted by the 911 outage, including motor vehicle collisions, a caller with chest pains who eventually called the hospital, a patient who was experiencing an overdose, a domestic violence incident, and a woman at home with her children who called 911 37 times to report an intruder.  She held off the intruder with a knife while she looked up the number for a local police station.  Mr. ffitch said the woman who called 911 37 times in one of their witnesses in the case.

Susan Baldwin, a consultant based in Newburyport, Mass., said that consumer protection depends on network redundancy and resilience, and reliability depends on a robust 911 system. She said that network service problems continue to exist because there is no incentive for carriers to maintain their networks.  “It’s more important than ever that states require service quality data from carriers,” she said. -Carrie DeLeon, carrie.deleon@wolterskluwer.com

Courtesy TRDaily