AT&T’s backdoor telecoms deregulation bill runs out of room in the California senate

11 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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“AB 1366 was pulled by the author, so it will not be considered today”, said senator Ben Hueso (D – San Diego) as he called the senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee to order yesterday. Assembly bill 1366 would extend a ban on regulation of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and other “Internet protocol enabled” services in California.

Conventional wisdom says the bill is dead for this year. It wasn’t amended before last night’s constitutional deadline, so there’ll be no more wrangling over the bill’s language. On the other hand, there are still three days left in the legislative session and it’s a high stakes bill for monopoly model telcos and cable companies like AT&T and Comcast. They stuff a lot of cash into lawmaker’s pockets have deep, philosophical points yet to make.

No reason for pulling the bill was offered. A hastily prepared analysis by committee staff shows that the line up of organisations for and against it didn’t change. AT&T, Frontier Communications, and the lobbying front organisation that Comcast and Charter Communications duck behind – the California Cable and Telecommunications Association – still support it; the Communications Workers of America, AT&T’s principal union, and the California Labor Federation still oppose it. In the heat of the end-of-the-session rush, what ends up in print often doesn’t reflect backroom reality, but in this case it’s probably accurate. Organised labor is probably the only force in Sacramento with more political power and money than AT&T, Comcast and Charter.

AB 1366 was disowned on Friday by assembly member Lorena Gonzalez (D – San Diego), who introduced it earlier this year and muscled it to within inches of the goal line. Presumably, she passed it over to two other assembly members – Jay Olbernolte (R – San Bernardino) and Tom Daly (D – Orange) – because the stiff opposition from labor organisations, which are the foundation of her political base, finally made it impossible for her to front for it.

The bill was amended during the handoff, limiting the ban’s extension to two years. But other amendments added even more perks for incumbent telecoms companies, particularly AT&T and, to a lesser extent, Frontier. Not surprisingly, that turned out to be a bad way to win friends in the final days of the legislative session.

The ban on VoIP regulation was imposed by the legislature in 2012, when no one was sure what direction VoIP or other services that ride on the Internet would take. Now we know. Today, VoIP is the telephone service technology preferred by telephone and cable companies because 1. it’s a century or so ahead of legacy copper phone tech, and 2. it’s unregulated. As a California Public Utilities Commission analysis shows, telcos are switching customers to VoIP at a rapid rate, to the point that state regulation of broadband and telephone infrastructure and service, which depends on legacy copper rules, will effectively end.