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The Kansas House of Representatives voted 118-1 to pass a bill they admit was written and pushed by the largest telecom companies in the state. The chief supporters all received campaign contributions from AT&T and other telecom interests.
Kansas’ House of Representatives voted 118-1 Monday to support a bill largely crafted by AT&T that will let the state’s largest phone company discontinue service at-will in rural areas of the state.
H.B. 2201 had near-universal support from legislators that openly admitted the legislation was conceived and written by the state’s largest telecommunications companies, chiefly AT&T, and grants the phone companies a third round of deregulation.
The legislation is expected to sail through the Kansas Senate with bipartisan support and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, who generally favors telecom deregulation, is likely to sign it.
The legislation was originally pushed as a money-saver for Kansas ratepayers. The bill calls for a major reduction in funding requirements for the Kansas Universal Service Fund (KUSF), which subsidizes rural telecommunications services in the state. The KUSF is principally funded through a surcharge found on customer bills. Under the terms of the bill, funding requirements will be drastically reduced, cutting the surcharge in the process.
The Kansas Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board testified if H.B. 2201 only contained KUSF reform, the group would have supported the measure. But the bill also has a myriad of deregulation measures that received little apparent attention by legislators:
- H.B. 2201 eliminates quality of service requirements. AT&T and other phone companies can deliver any level of phone service they choose with no oversight and nobody to answer to;
- Allows price discrimination based on geographic location, which could mean substantially higher phone rates in rural areas, especially for nearby toll calls;
- Allows telecom companies to exit the Lifeline program for inexpensive service for the poorest Kansans after 90 days written notice;
- Removes AT&T and other phone companies as “carriers of last resort,” which means they are no longer required to provide phone service upon request.
The elimination of the “carrier of last resort” provision is essential to AT&T’s plans to abandon rural landline service, forcing customers to buy substantially more expensive cellular phone and data service. With the passage of H.B. 2201, AT&T can notify rural Kansas customers it will drop their landline service and/or broadband at-will.
Siewert
The single “no” vote came from freshman Rep. Larry Hibbard, (R-Toronto), who noted landline service was essential in many rural areas. Hibbard worried AT&T would use the legislation as an excuse to raise rates or force elderly Kansans to use a wireless cell phone, which could prove too confusing for them.
“This bill may come back to haunt rural Kansas,” Hibbard warned.
“We have this mentality, ‘if I don’t have a wire, I can’t make a phone call.’ That’s not true,” countered Rep. Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican who supports the bill. “That copper line is being replaced with an antenna, and it’s more reliable.
“We are not killing Lifeline,” Schwab added. “We are just not mandating it.”
Other supporters were far more sanguine, even disclosing the substantial role telecom companies had getting the legislation written and shepherded through the House.
“This was an industry bill that they all worked very hard” to put together, admitted Rep. Joe Seiwert (R-Pretty Prairie) during a House Republican caucus meeting. “[This bill] puts legislators in an easier position of not having to ‘choose between friends.’”
Kuether
Seiwert, for example, did not have to disappoint his largest campaign contributor — AT&T — or others who donated to his campaign, including the Koch Brothers, Cox Communications, CenturyLink, Verizon, and the Kansas cable lobby.
Rep. Annie Kuether of Topeka, who is the ranking Democrat on the Utilities and Telecommunications Committee, also supported the bill. Kuether is the recipient of campaign contributions from AT&T, Cox Cable, Time Warner Cable, Kansas cable and telephone company PAC groups, and more than a dozen independent telecommunications providers doing business in Kansas.
For ordinary Kansans, the bill does not assure savings, and could lead to dramatic price increases, especially in rural areas forced to pay for cell service. The measure also eliminates the Kansas Corporation Commission as a last resort for customers with service problems that go unresolved. Those customers would be on their own after the bill becomes law.
Legislators did not see any incompatibility between the proposed bill and Kansas state policy, set forth in Statute 66-2001:
It is hereby declared to be the public policy of the state to:
(a) Ensure that every Kansan will have access to a first class telecommunications infrastructure that provides excellent services at an affordable price;
(b) ensure that consumers throughout the state realize the benefits of competition through increased services and improved telecommunications facilities and infrastructure at reduced rates;
(c) promote consumer access to a full range of telecommunications services, including advanced telecommunications services that are comparable in urban and rural areas throughout the state;
(d) advance the development of a statewide telecommunications infrastructure that is capable of supporting applications, such as public safety, telemedicine, services for persons with special needs, distance learning, public library services, access to internet providers and others; and
(e) protect consumers of telecommunications services from fraudulent business practices and practices that are inconsistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity.
The Associated Press notes this is AT&T’s third trip through the state legislature to win deregulation. A 2006 state law deregulated prices for bundles of services that included wireless, Internet access, cable TV or other video and moved toward deregulating rates for local service in exchanges where competition existed. A 2011 law went further, allowing companies to avoid most state price caps. This year’s bill would allow those companies to avoid even the Kansas Corporation Commission’s consumer protection regulations and minimum quality-of-service standards.
Other stories of interest:
- Kansas’ Law Allowing AT&T to Deregulate Itself Means Higher Phone Bills Are Imminent
- Don’t Let AT&T Abandon Rural Landlines, Appeals Kentucky Resources Council
- Wisconsin Republicans Rushing AT&T’s Deregulation Wishlist Into Law Before Recall Votes
- Michigan Residents Protest Deregulation Bill That Could End Landlines; “Get a Cell Phone,” Says AT&T
- AT&T-Backed Telecommunications Deregulation Bill Shot Down in Wisconsin
Naturally, Kansas reps need not worry about AT&T pulling the plug on DSL to their rural estates.
By jettisoning the less-profitable markets, AT&T -could- lower prices in the region… It was nice of the reps to not make that obligatory.
Every AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink customer in Kansas should be ashamed of AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink and their state politicians for their decision to abandoned it’s entire landline operation in Kansas very severely.
I feel that both AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink and all of the state politicians are trying to be way too big being like the Wal-Mart’s, the Paramount Pictures with the movie theater chain of the 1940′s, the Clive Davis’s when he was at Columbia Records in the 1970′s, the Neil Bogart’s of Casablanca Records fame of the 1970′s disco era, the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s, the David Smith (one of the Smith brothers from Sinclair Broadcast Group), the Harry Pappas as part of the Pappas Telecasting Companies, the Bernard Madoff’s, the Enron’s, the Worldcom’s, the Adelphia’s, the Tyco’s, the Martha Stewart’s, and the Jill Kelley’s of the 2000′s by letting greed get out of control so all of the head employees and bosses at AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink to be able to enjoy carefree lavishly spending to support carefree lavishly lifestyles with luxurious homes, luxurious yachts, luxurious jets, luxurious cars, join luxurious clubs, be in luxurious cruises, go to luxurious conventions, go to luxurious hotels, go to luxurious casinos to do gambling, throw luxurious parties, and have other luxurious items just to make them very happy then trying and willingness to improve the quality of all of their employees and making the customers very happy as well.
I hope and I wish that AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink goes out of business for their unwillingness to care for their customers and their employees. I feel that both AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink are trying to bribe like the General Tire/RKO General of the 1960′s and 1970′s by not being very honest of not only the customers and also on themselves.
I hope and I wish that the FCC would allow all the telephone providers with internet broadband that has never ever impose usage caps to the internet broadband customers be allowed to purchase and acquired customers from AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink and are being required to make a real big concession that they would promised not to have any difficulties with all the internet broadband providers competitors and their customers by not imposing usage caps and meters and raising prices for them to put them out of business sooner and without any interference for 12 whole years straight.
I feel that both AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink and all of the state politicians are way too big being way too busy being the Carly Rae Jepsen Call Me Maybe, Rebecca Black Friday, Double Take Hot Problems and Guns N Roses Axl Rose as well as trying be act like the Jerry Sandusky’s as the assaulters, the Jodi Arias’s, the Casey Anthony’s, the Charles Manson’s, the Lyle and Erik Menendez’s, the O. J. Simpson’s, the Scott Peterson’s, and the Drew Peterson’s as the greedy murderers, the Lindsay Lohan’s as the drunks and the drug abusers, the Rodney Dangerfield’s, the John Belushi’s, and the Chris Farley’s as the comedians, the Gordon Gekko’s, the Victoria Grayson’s, The Victor Newman’s and the Jack Abbott’s, the J. R. Ewing’s and the Cliff Barnes’s, the Charles Montgomery Burn’s, the Homer and Bart Simpson’s, the Peter Griffin’s, the Garfield cat’s, the Cookie Monster’s, and the Miss Piggy’s, of the telephone and internet broadband industry of preferring to let customer service suffer in Kansas to rake in more money for themselves.
I feel AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink and all of the state politicians and all of the state politicians are trying to turn into the 1919 Chicago White Sox’s baseball team and the Southern Methodist University football of the 1980′s to force all the customers to accept whether or not the customers will be willing to deal with AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink customer service and making them deal with just getting wireless phone and internet service in Kansas. I urge all the AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink customers in Kansas to boycott AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink and all of the state politicians including those in the House and Senate right now for making all the customers suffer from having to deal with poor service for both of their telephone and internet broadband needs and abandoning wireline landline service in Kansas.
I’m commented in response to all AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink customers who are very sick of all the ways AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink treats both their customers and their employees and to see all of them being force to suffer with AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink and have fears to see AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink service deteriorate very much rapidly in a heartbeat in Kansas.
I gracefully would support all community internet broadband providers and would want all of them to be able to be allowed to provide the fastest internet speeds of up to 1GB very fairly by the communities being allowed to build their own fiber optics cable lines without interference from AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink with the fact that AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink is already providing very limited internet broadband service at way less broadband speeds to all of their own customers and of their decision to get rid of their wireline landline services in Kansas.
I hope and I wish that both AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink is willing to allow all the communites to build out their own fiber optic cable networks for their superior mega fast internet broadband service that beats out AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink internet service and speeds to all of their own customers in Kansas.
James, elfonblog knows elfonblog needs to learn the craft of brevity, of writing shorter sentences, of coming to the point more quickly, instead of rambling, going on and on, stretching out his words, and making folks wonder when he’ll get to the point… but elfonblog thinks your derp goes way too far over the top and encourages you to stop mainlining the energy drinks.