The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court, issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Regulatory Bulletin.
TELECOM
Washington
The Washington UTC has initiated a review of Qwest Corporation d/b/a CenturyLink QC and Qwest Communications Company LLC d/b/a CenturyLink QCC (CenturyLink) billing practices. A complaint filed by Commission Staff alleges that CenturyLink has “committed 2,644,014 violations of statute and rules enforced by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (Commission) related to improper billing practices.” The violations include billing customers improper rates for Access Recovery charges, Federal Access charges, Federal Telecommunications Relay Service Fund charges, and Washington Telephone Relay Service Fund charges during the months of July and August 2012; billing customers incorrect city and county taxes; improperly billing Washington Telephone Assistance Program (WTAP) customers by failing to issue proper credits or apply discounts; and refusing to change bill due dates at customer request upon a showing of good cause, billing customers incorrectly, and billing for services not provided to customers or not requested by customers. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for October 7, 2014.
West Virginia
Frontier Communications has requested that the PSC rate deregulate certain telecommunications services in its service territory including (i) business local exchange services, (ii) intrastate long distance, (iii) national directory assistance, (iv) residential speed dialing service, (v) private line service and (vi) digital data and ISDN services. Staff filed a final memorandum concluding that a portion of the services Frontier seeks to rate deregulate are workably competitive. It expressed concern, however, regarding the current level of competition in Frontier territory for business local exchange services. Requests to intervene must be filed on or before May 30, 2014. Anyone not intervening, but desiring to comment regarding this petition, should file a written or electronic comment on or before July 1, 2014. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for July 1-2, 2014.
