The next name of Time Warner Cable?

Charter Communications is laying the foundation for a leveraged buyout of Time Warner Cable before the end of the year in a deal that could leave Time Warner Cable’s broadband customers with Charter’s usage caps.

Reuters reported discussions between the two companies grew more serious after last week’s revelation a poor third quarter left TWC with 308,000 fewer subscribers.

Charter is relying on guidance from Goldman Sachs to structure a financing deal likely to leave Charter in considerable debt. Charter Communications emerged from bankruptcy in 2009 and is the country’s tenth largest cable operator, estimated to be worth about $13 billion. Time Warner Cable is the second largest cable operator and is worth more than $34 billion.

The disparity between the two companies has kept Time Warner Cable resistant to a deal with Charter, stating it would not be beneficial to shareholders. Charter executives hope to eventually win shareholder support for a buyout stressing the significant cost savings possible from a combined operation, particularly for cable programming.

The deal would likely end Time Warner Cable as a brand and leave Charter Communications CEO Thomas Rutledge in charge of a much larger cable company. Pricing and packaging decisions are usually made by the buyer, which could bring faster broadband speeds to Time Warner customers, but also usage caps already in place at Charter.

John Malone’s War on Customers

Malone

Cable billionaire John Malone, former CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) — America’s largest cable operator in the 1980s — believes consolidation is critical to the future of a cable business facing competition from phone companies and cord cutting. Malone’s Liberty Media, which now holds a 25% stake in Charter, is currently buying and consolidating cable operators in Europe. Malone’s post-consolidation vision calls for only two or three cable operators in the United States.

Malone’s quest for consolidation is nothing new.

Under his leadership, TCI eventually became the country’s biggest cable operator, but one often accused of poor service and high prices. More than a decade of complaints from customers eventually attracted the attention of the U.S. Congress, which sought to rein in the industry with the 1992 Cable Act — legislation that lightly regulated rental fees for equipment and the price of the company’s most-basic television tier.

Despite the fact consumer advocates didn’t win stronger consumer protection regulations, TCI was still incensed it faced a new regulatory environment that left its hands tied. One executive at a TCI subsidiary advocated retaliation with broad rate increases for unregulated services to make up any losses from mandated rate cuts.

A 1993 internal TCI memo obtained by the Washington Post instructed TCI system managers and division vice presidents to increase prices charged for customer service calls and add new fees for common installation services the company used to offer for free. TCI’s Barry Marshall recommended charging for as many “transaction” services as possible — like hooking up VCR’s, running cable wire, and programming remote controls for confused customers.

“We have to have discipline,” Marshall wrote. “We cannot be dissuaded from the [new] charges simply because customers object. It will take awhile, but they’ll get used to it. The best news of all is we can blame it on re-regulation and the government now. Let’s take advantage of it!”

Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) was the nation’s largest cable operator. Later known as AT&T Cable, the company was eventually sold to Comcast.

The FCC’s interim chairman at the time — James Quello, charged with monitoring the cable industry, was not amused.

“It typifies the attitude of cable companies engaging in creative pricing and rate increases to evade the intent of Congress and the FCC,” Quello said. “There is little doubt that the cable industry has an economic stake in discrediting the congressional act they vehemently and unsuccessfully opposed.”

Marshall defended his internal memo, although admitted it was inartfully written and was not intended for the public. Revelation of a damaging memo like this would normally lead to a quiet resignation by the offending author, but not at John Malone’s TCI, a company with a reputation for being difficult.

Mark Robichaux’s 2005 book, Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business, was even less charitable.

Robichaux describes Malone as a “complicated hero,” at least for investors for whom he was willing to ignore banking rules and creatively interpret tax law. Robichaux wrote Malone’s idea of customer service was to ‘charge as much as you can, but spend as little as you can get away with.’

TCI’s top priority was to keep up the cable business as an “insular cartel.” The predictable result included accusations of “shoddy service” customers were forced to take or leave. In the handful of markets where TCI faced another cable competitor, TCI ruthlessly slashed prices to levels some would describe as “predatory,” only to rescind them the moment the competitor was gone. TCI’s intolerance for competition usually meant mounting pressure on competitors to sell their system to TCI (sometimes at an astronomical price) or face a certain slow death from unsustainable price cuts.

Among Malone’s most-trusted friends: junk bond financier Michael Milken and Leo Hindery, former CEO of Global Crossing.

Congressman Albert Gore, Jr., later vice-president during the Clinton Administration, was probably Malone’s fiercest critic in Washington. Gore’s office was swamped with complaints from his Tennessee constituents upset over TCI’s constant rate increases and anti-competitive behavior.

The cable industry’s biggest competitor in the 1980s-1990s was a TVRO 6-12 foot diameter home satellite system.

Gore was especially unhappy that TCI’s grip extended even to its biggest competitor — satellite television.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, cable operators made life increasingly difficult for home satellite dish owners, many in rural areas unserved by cable television. But things were worse for home dish owners that walked away from TCI and began watching satellite television instead. To protect against cord-cutting, the cable industry demanded encryption of all basic and premium cable channels delivered via satellite. It was not hard to convince programmers to scramble — most cable networks in the 1980s were part-owned by the cable industry itself.

To make matters worse, unlike cable systems that only leased set-top boxes to customers, home dish owners had to buy combination receiver-descrambler equipment outright, starting at $500. Just a few years later, the industry pressured programmers to switch to a slightly different encryption system — one that required home dish owners replace their expensive set-top box with a different decoder module available only for sale.

Gore was further incensed to learn TCI often insisted home dish owners living within a TCI service area buy their satellite-delivered programming direct from the cable company. Customers hoping to leave cable for good found themselves still being billed by TCI.

Sometimes the rhetoric against TCI and Malone got personal.

”He called me Darth Vader and the leader of the cable Cosa Nostra,” Malone said of Gore. “You can’t win a pissing contest with a skunk, so there’s no point in getting involved in that kind of rhetoric.”

“There’s a joke going around Washington,” John Tinker, a New York-based Morgan Stanley & Company investment banker who specializes in cable television said of Malone back in 1990. “If you have a gun with two bullets, and you have Abu Nidal, Saddam Hussein and John Malone in a room, who would you shoot? The answer is John Malone — twice, to make sure he’s dead.”

TCI itself was a four letter word in the many small communities that endured the cable company’s insufferable service, outdated equipment, and constant rate “adjustments.”

The New York Times reported John Malone’s TCI had a reputation for treating customers with “utter disdain,” and provided examples:

• In 1973, rate negotiations stalled with local regulators in Vail, Colo., the local TCI system shut off all programming for a weekend and ran nothing but the names and home phone numbers of the mayor and city manager. The harried local government gave in.
• In 1981, TCI withheld fees and vowed to go completely dark in Jefferson City, Mo., if the city failed to renew its franchise, while a TCI employee — “who turned out to have a psychological problem,” said Malone — threatened harm to the city’s media consultant. Again, a beleaguered local government renewed the franchise — although in a subsequent lawsuit, TCI was fined $10.8 million in actual damages and $25 million in punitive damages.
• In 1983, the small city of Kearney, Neb., also dissatisfied with poor service and rising rates, tried to give Malone some competition in the form of a rival system built by the regional telephone company. TCI slashed fees and added channels until the enemy was driven from the field.

“That’s the dark side, if you will, of TCI,” said Richard J. MacDonald, a media analyst with New York-based MacDonald Grippo Riely.

By mid-1989, Malone’s frenzied effort to consolidate the cable industry resulted in him presiding over 482 merger/buyout deals, on average one every two weeks. Among the legacy cable companies that no longer existed after TCI’s takeover crew arrived: Heritage Communications, United Artists Communications and Storer Communications.

To cover the debt-laden deals, Malone simply raised cable rates and shopped for easy credit. Bidding with others’ money, the per-subscriber price of cable systems shot up from $998 in 1983 to an astronomical $2,328 in 1989.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found deregulating the cable industry cost customers through rate hikes averaging 43 percent. In Denver, TCI raised rates more than 70% between 1986 and 1989.

Malone’s attempt to finance a leveraged, debt-heavy buyout of Time Warner Cable seems to show his business philosophy has not changed much.

Powell

A former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission turned top cable lobbyist rang the warning bell at an industry convention this week, recommending America’s cable operators hurry out usage caps and usage-based billing before a perception takes hold the industry is trying to protect cable television revenue.

Michael Powell, the former head of the FCC during the Bush Administration is now America’s top cable industry lobbyist, serving as president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA). From 2001-2005 Powell claimed to represent the interests of the American people. From 2011 on, he represents the interests of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, and other large cable operators.

Attending the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2013 in Atlanta, Powell identified the cable industry’s top priority for next year: “broadband, broadband, and broadband.”

The NCTA fears the current unregulated “Wild West” nature of broadband service is ripe for regulatory checks and balances. The NCTA plans to prioritize lobbying to prevent the implementation of consumer protection regulations governing the Internet. Powell warned it would be “World War III” if the FCC moved to oversee broadband by changing its definition as an unregulated “information service” to a regulated common carrier utility.

Powell is very familiar with the FCC’s current definition because he presided over the agency when it contemplated the current framework as it applies to DSL and cable broadband providers.

While Powell has a long record opposing blatant Net Neutrality violations that block competing websites and services, he does not want the FCC meddling in how providers charge or provision access.

Powell believes some of cable’s biggest problems come from bad marketing.

Powell disagreed with statements from some Wall Street analysts like Craig Moffett who earlier predicted the window for broadband usage-based limits and fees was closing or closed already.

Powell does not care that consumers are accustomed to and overwhelmingly support unlimited access. Instead, he urged cable executives to “move with some urgency and purpose” to implement usage-based billing for economic reasons, despite the growing perception such limits are designed to protect cable television service from online competition.

“I don’t think it’s too late,” Powell said. “But it’s not something you can wait for forever.”

Powell pointed to the success wireless carriers have had forcing the majority of customers to usage capped, consumption billing plans and believes the cable industry can do the same.

The NCTA president also described many of the industry’s hurdles as marketing and perception problems.

The cable industry, long bottom-rated by consumers in satisfaction surveys, can do better according to Powell, by making sure they are nimble enough to meet competition head-on.

Powell described Google Fiber as a limited experiment unlikely to directly compete with cable over the long-term, and with a new version of the DOCSIS cable broadband platform on the way, operators will be able to compete with speeds of 500-1,000Mbps and beyond. He just hates that it’s called DOCSIS 3.1, noting it wasn’t “consumer-friendly” in “a 4G and 5G world.”

Kevin Hart, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Cox Communications joked the marketing department would get right on it.

CenturyLink is seeking “greater flexibility” to set its own prices, terms and conditions of service without a review by Washington State regulators, even as its broadband customers complain about bait and switch Internet speeds and poor service.

Three years after the Monroe, La., based independent phone company purchased Qwest — a former Baby Bell serving the Pacific Northwest — CenturyLink continues to lose customers to cell phone providers and cable phone and broadband service. Since 2001, CenturyLink and its predecessor have said goodbye to 60 percent of their customers, reducing the number of lines in service from around 2.7 million to just over 1 million.

CenturyLink is apparently ready to lose still more after upsetting customers with a notice it intended to seek deregulation that could lead to rising phone bills.

Docket UT-130477, filed with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) proposes to replace currently regulated service with what CenturyLink calls “an Alternate Form Of Regulation.” (AFOR)

If approved, CenturyLink will “normalize” telephone rates in Washington State, language some suspect is “code” for a rate increase. For CenturyLink customers in cities like Seattle, Spokane, and Tacoma, the maximum rate permitted for basic phone service for the next three years will be $15.50 (unless a customer already pays more), before calling features, taxes, and surcharges are applied. Most observers, including the state regulator, suspect CenturyLink will limit rate hikes to $1-2 if approved. A higher increase might provoke more customers to leave.

Washington residents already pay the nation’s second highest taxes on wireless service. Now landline customers also pay more. (Graphic: The Spokesman)

“We don’t think they can do much because, in our view, all (a big rate increase) is going to do is accelerate people dropping the landline into their homes,” Brian Thomas, a spokesman for the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission told The Spokesman-Review. “A lot of people are cutting the cord.”

Frontier Communications, which previously won its own case for deregulation within its service areas including Everett, Wenatchee, and Tri-Cities, raised rates about $1 beginning this month.

A spokesman for the company confessed Frontier’s phone service is becoming obsolete.

“It’s safe to say plain old telephone service is in the process of becoming archaic for some people,” Frontier’s Carl Gipson said. “Five years from now, it will be almost – but not quite – extinct.”

Every rate change seems to provoke a review of whether landline service is still necessary.

Earlier this year, CenturyLink jumped on board legislation that purposely increased phone rates by several dollars a month by removing the sales tax exemption on residential telephone service. Wireless companies did not enjoy the same exemption and sued for parity.

A confidential settlement with state regulators made Washington phone customers, instead of telecom companies, liable for the sales tax starting in August. As a result, some residential phone bills went up at much as $5 based on retroactively charged sales tax.

Customers sticking with CenturyLink often say it is the only broadband provider in rural towns across the state. Although better than satellite broadband, the lack of regulatory oversight and technology investments have allowed CenturyLink to sell Internet speeds it cannot provide to customers.

At a hearing held this week by the San Juan County Council, members criticized CenturyLink officials on hand for selling fast service but delivering slow speeds to the group of islands between the mainland of Washington State and Vancouver Island, B.C.

Hughes

“Last night I did a speed test at my house and I am paying for 10Mbps but only getting 4.74Mbps,” complained Councilman Rick Hughes (District 4 – Orcas West). “I am paying for 10 and I am only getting 5Mbps, so how is that fair? There has been a ton of frustration over the last two years we have worked on this broadband issue. Everywhere I go and every meeting I talk to all I hear is complaints about CenturyLink. No matter what they are paying for, it’s a poor broadband connection to the end customer.”

CenturyLink provides broadband to 88% of the territory the company serves in Washington. Like most telephone companies, CenturyLink relies on DSL in much of its footprint and has upgraded central offices, remote equipment, and the telephone lines that connect them. On the San Juan Islands, most customers used to receive 1-3Mbps, but CenturyLink claimed at this week’s hearing it spent billion on infrastructure improvements that can now deliver faster Internet service across the state. In San Juan County, CenturyLink claims:

• 58% of all qualified addresses were upgraded to 10-25Mbps;
• 66% now qualify for more than 10Mbps (but less than 25Mbps) versus 46% prior to upgrades;
• 29% of customers now qualify to sign up for 25Mbps service.

CenturyLink warned the council its speed claims were not to be taken literally, noting DSL “speed is dependent on distance from equipment; speeds drop quickly as distance increases.”

Hughes told CenturyLink officials residents appreciated the investment, but customers were still disappointed after being promised higher speeds than actually received.

“When people call customer service, there is always an excuse about why there is a problem,” said Hughes. “If people are paying for something, they want to receive it.”

“For our long-term financial interests in this county, we need to have reliable 10-25Mbps service to customers on any part of the islands,” Hughes added. “My goal has always been 90+ percent should be able to get 25Mbps or better connectivity in the county.”

The problem for CenturyLink is the amount of upgrade investment versus the amount of return that investment will generate. San Juan County is disconnected from the mainland and collectively house only 15,769 residents. But it is also the smallest of Washington’s 39 counties in land area, which can make infrastructure projects less costly.

CenturyLink committed to continue investment in its network “where economically feasible.”

San Juan County’s Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO), a member-owned, non-profit cooperative electric utility may have a partial solution to the problem of meeting Return on Investment requirements.

OPALCO originally proposed a hybrid fiber-wireless system designed to reach 90% of the county with a $34 million investment, to be built over two years. When completed, all county residents would pay a $15 monthly co-op infrastructure fee and a $75 monthly fee for broadband and telephone service. To gauge interest, OPALCO asked residents for a $90 pre-commitment deposit. By the annual meeting in May, the co-op admitted only 900 residents signed up and it needed 5,800 customers to make the project a success.

Some residents balked at the high cost, others did not want wireless broadband technology, and some local environmental activists wanted OPALCO to focus on clean, affordable energy and avoid the competitive broadband business.

The lack of commitment forced the co-op to modify its broadband plans, offering a “New Direction” to residents in June 2013.

OPALCO elected to stay out of the ISP business and instead announced a public-private initiative, providing fiber infrastructure to existing service providers. In effect, the co-op will cover the cost of building fiber extensions where CenturyLink is not willing to invest. For a $3-5 million investment from the co-op, ISPs like CenturyLink will be able to commission OPALCO to build fiber in the right places to make DSL service better. CenturyLink would have non-exclusive rights to the fiber network and would have to pay the co-op a service lease fee.

Unlike ISPs in other communities that have shunned publicly funded fiber infrastructure, CenturyLink says it will contemplate a trial — buying bandwidth from OPALCO instead of enhancing its own fiber middle mile network — to test what level of improved service CenturyLink can offer customers.

Regardless of CenturyLink’s plans, OPALCO is moving forward installing limited fiber connections as part of an effort to develop a more modern electric grid.

“Our data communications network brings exponential benefit to our membership,” OPALCO notes. “It includes tools that allow the co-op to: control peak usage and keep power costs down, remotely manage and control the electrical distribution system, manage and resolve power outages more efficiently, integrate and manage community solar projects and improve public safety throughout the county.”

There are some drawbacks, reports Wally Gudgell from The Gudgell Group.

“It will take longer to implement, and will impact fewer businesses and households,” Gudgell writes. “While about two-thirds of the islands will eventually be covered, more remote areas will have to work with a local ISP and potentially pay more for service.  DSL coverage for homes that are further than 15,000 feet from CenturyLink fiber-served distribution hubs will be challenging. Some homeowners may need to pay for fiber to be run to their homes by Islands Network (fiber direct is costly, estimated at $20/foot).”

Efforts by New York’s largest cable operator to deregulate telephone service in New York, potentially cutting off delinquent ratepayers’ phone service at inconvenient times, has run into opposition from an Albany newspaper.

The Times Union published an editorial last week opposing the measure, fearing it could leave some of the millions of Time Warner Cable phone customers without service on nights and weekends without any way to make a payment to prevent the disconnection.

Unlike other services that companies like Time Warner offer — such as TV, Internet, security and remote lighting and heating control — the home telephone holds special status. It has long been regarded as an essential utility, much like residential gas, water and electricity. The PSC regulates how and when a utility can cut a customer off such a critical service for failure to pay a bill on time.

For years, Time Warner maintained it was not a phone company and should not be bound by these rules. That changed earlier this year when it accepted the responsibilities and regulations that come with being a residential phone provider.

Now, though, Time Warner is petitioning the PSC to change the rules governing home phone bills.

Some of the requests appear reasonable, such as updating language about local and long-distance calling charges. But that’s not the case with Time Warner’s request to expand the hours and days when it can disconnect services for customers who have fallen behind in their bills, including their phone service.

Specifically, Time Warner wants to deal with delinquent customers on nights and weekends.

Most other utility providers can cut service for non-payment only during weekdays, when the PSC’s staff is working and available to help broker solutions and protect consumers. The PSC has the authority to make decisions on disputed bills, revise payment plan arrangements and remedy situations where continued service is medically necessary.

Late and unpaid bills are admittedly a chronic problem for cable companies. In the past year, Time Warner sent more than 1.7 million past-due notices to residential customers in the state and shut off or suspended service to nearly 600,000 households for failing to pay bills.

Time Warner calls its proposed change a convenience to its customers. It’s really a convenience for Time Warner, which wants to handle phone bills the same as other services. But this would bypass the special safeguards for phone consumers.

The Public Service Commission is still reviewing the proposal from Time Warner Cable, which is the dominant cable provider in upstate New York and parts of New York City.

A sweeping deregulation measure sponsored by Verizon Communications would end the telephone company’s obligation to provide landline service and remove state-mandated customer quality of service standards in Massachusetts.

House Bill 2930, “An Act modernizing telephone regulation and encouraging economic growth,” introduced by Rep. Stephen L. DiNatale (D-Fitchburg) is succinct:

SECTION 1. Chapter 25C of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2010 Official Edition, is hereby amended by inserting after section 7 thereof the following sections.

Section 8. Notwithstanding any other general or special law to the contrary, the department shall have no jurisdiction, general supervision, regulation or control over wireless service, including mobile radio telephone service, or radio utilities.

Section 9. Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, subject to the provisions of section 10 of this chapter, no provision of this chapter, Chapter 25 or Chapter 159, 8 and no regulation, order or settlement or portion thereof adopted pursuant to any such provision, shall apply to any telephone company (or a common carrier offering telephone service) in any municipality for which the company or carrier certifies to the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation that there are at least two providers offering voice telephone service to retail residential customers in that municipality using any technology, including but not limited to wireless voice service and VoIP service.

Section 10. Nothing in sections 8 or 9 of this chapter shall be construed to affect or modify:
a. the authority of the attorney general to apply and enforce chapter 93A or other consumer protection laws of general applicability;
b. the department’s authority under sections 18B and 18H of Chapter 159, concerning enhanced 911 service, and under section 15E of Chapter 166, concerning telephone relay service;
c. the rights or obligations of any carrier under 47 U.S.C. § 251 or 47 U.S.C. § 252; or
d. the department’s authority to administer the federal Lifeline and Link-up programs or the Connect America Fund.

SECTION 2. Sections 11, 12, 12A, 13, 14 and 15 of Chapter 166 are hereby repealed.

The measure was discussed at a hearing this week before the Legislature’s Energy & Telecommunications Committee. Verizon argued its company is still regulated as if it was a monopoly, with reporting requirements and customer service mandates that do not apply to its competitors in the cable or wireless industry.

DiNatale

“We have to answer a customer’s call within x number of seconds,” said Verizon spokesman Phil Santoro. “If we don’t, we get penalized. No other company that provides phone service has to do that. They’re all regulations that were formed when we were a monopoly, and they haven’t been changed.”

Verizon lobbyist Joe Zukowski told the Boston Business Journal Verizon is required to respond to repair calls within a 24-hour window, something not required of its biggest competitor Comcast. Verizon has to report its annual finances and various customer metrics governing response times and outages to state regulators. Verizon also has to offer landline service anywhere in its service area across most of the state, while cable companies can pick the places they wish to serve.

DiNatale regularly supports Verizon’s legislative initiatives. In 2012, he proposed a bill to amend state law to remove the authority of the Department of Telecommunications and Cable to regulate the wireless industry, deferring instead to federal regulations that industry representatives said would level the playing field.

DiNatale suggested Massachusetts could be left behind if the legislature didn’t adopt the measure. Rep. Randy Hunt, a Sandwich Republican, asked if Massachusetts had missed out on any innovations in technology because of overregulation. Zukowski suggested a Massachusetts legislature hostile to business interests would make the company think twice about expanding its 4G LTE network in the state. By November, the bill was effectively buried in a legislative maneuver and by June 2013, Verizon announced it largely completed its 4G LTE upgrade, regardless of the bill.

DiNatale’s latest bill includes last year’s wireless oversight ban as well as forbidding the Department of Telecommunications and Cable from regulating Verizon in any part of the state where at least one provider of any kind offers competitive service.

Despite DiNatale’s attempt to ban state regulation of wireless service,  Sen. Karen Spilka (D-Ashland), argued at Tuesday’s hearing for (S 1617), “The Cellphone User’s Bill of Rights,” that would require clearly published prices and service policies, monitors the quality of cell service in the state, and limits all cell contracts to 12 months.

“Many people don’t have landline phones anymore. However, as wireless subscribership increases, so do complaints about the contracts and services,” Spilka told the committee.

Zukowski suggested that rural areas will still be covered by regulation where Verizon maintains a monopoly. But the legislation eliminates regulation from any part of the state where even one competitor promises to provide service. AT&T Mobility alone would give Verizon an effective way out of regulatory oversight, because AT&T claims it already provides solid service to the majority of the state.

AT&T Mobility claims its competing cell service is available across almost the entire state of Massachusetts. The areas boxed in red are the only significant parts of the state without claimed coverage by AT&T.

There are only about three dozen or so towns in the state with no cable voice service, and even fewer with significant sections that have no cell phone service, all in the sparsely populated rural central and western parts of the state.

Other key components of this and another bill Verizon is supporting this term:

• Verizon would end its commitment to provide universal service in the state. Under the terms of the bill, Verizon could also justify ceasing rural landline service and offer an alternative such as Voice Link, a wireless landline replacement not subject to state oversight;
• Verizon would not have to report finances and customer service metrics and would no longer have to meet mandated customer service standards;
• State authority to compel reliable E911 service without any charge to the calling party and mandates regarding service for the disabled are weakened or eliminated;
• Elimination of a requirement providing Verizon customers with 10 free directory assistance calls per month, unless the customer is certified as elderly or disabled;
• Impose clear terms that wireless service is off-limits to state regulators.

The bill is co-sponsored by: Rep. Stephen Kulik (D-Worthington), Sen. Anthony Petruccelli (D-East Boston), Rep. Kathi-Anne Reinstein (D-Revere), and Sen. Sal DiDomenico (D-Everett).