Relates to publication of rate schedules by telephone corporations

Summary of provisions

Section 1 of the bill would eliminate the requirement that telephone corporations like Frontier and Verizon, as well as those competitors of Verizon that are certified local exchange carriers, file tariffs for their competitive non-basic retail services with the New York State Public Service Commission (Commission) where they elect, instead, to make that information available on their public websites. The section further requires such companies to develop a customer service guide and file it with the commission as well as make it available to any customer upon request. Further it requires notice of changes in non-basic service terms and conditions to customers.

Section 2: Sets forth the effective date

Justification

Today, a small number of the telecommunications providers in the New York market are required to file and maintain tariffs with the Commission that describe their retail service offerings, the prices charged, and the terms and conditions for such offerings. In some instances, those filed rates, terms or conditions are not even allowed to take effect for a minimum of 30 days or more. These tariff requirements are a vestige of the monopoly era of telecommunications when the Commission was charged with overseeing and regulating monopoly providers. Today the marketplace is highly-competitive, and most of the providers in the market, including large cable providers that offer telephone services, are not required to file or maintain tariffs, or to secure Commission approvals for the services they offer their customers in competition with other regulated telephone corporations. These other providers instead have agreements between themselves and their customers.

The retail tariff filing for non-basic services and approval obligations are an unnecessary burden on the telephone corporations that remain subject to them, and they increase the cost of doing business for those corporations while failing to provide any benefit to customers. To comply with these obligations, incumbent telephone providers must maintain a tariff database containing general terms and conditions, and specific service descriptions and terms and conditions for all the regulated telecommunications services it provides, including even separate filings for individual case basis services

provided to business customers. Whenever it introduces a new service or makes any change to the terms and conditions of its service offerings, regulatory specialists review the service or change with product managers, draft tariff language, create specially-formatted tariff pages, file these pages with the Commission, and distribute them as required.

Traditional providers are also required to maintain an electronic database housing the tariffs and ensure that it is accessible to the Commission. This process is parallel to, but must be coordinated with, the separate processes undertaken for distinct employees to ensure adequate and timely customer communications. Today, good customer service in a competitive market requires the providers to communicate the rates, terms, and conditions of the services customers purchase by means of scripts, welcome packages, bills, and other information. In fact, customers can obtain information about their services at any time at a company's public website.

This information is far more accessible to customers than tariffs and comparable to the materials provided by competitors, thus better facilitating competitive comparison. Drafting, filing, and maintaining tariff databases is an additional layer of communication, not typically relied on by customers. In short, direct communication with customers which providers already undertake today is more informative to customers than are tariffs. Not only are tariffs an administrative burden for the providers, but they also slow down the flow of information in a competitive market. For example, traditional providers must file tariffs days in advance of making changes to their services, thus giving competitors advanced notice of business plans.

By eliminating retail tariffs for non-basic services for telephone companies and certified providers that elect to post the rates terms and conditions of those services on their websites along with other requirements included in this bill, New York would be joining with the federal government and numerous other states which have taken such action. The federal government eliminated tariffs for interstate long distance services over fifteen years ago with no harm to consumers. Nationally, 40 states have already implemented some form of de-tariffing for tele-communications services.

Fiscal implications

No fiscal impact to the state, but the state would likely achieve administrative savings as a result of less work involved with processing these types of filings.

History

This is a new bill

Effective date

This bill shall take effect on the 90th day after it shall have become law.