Five Fundamentals for the Phone Network, Part 3: Protecting All Consumers

Public Knowledge has proposed Five Fundamentals to guide the phone network upgrade to an IP-based system and this piece focuses on protecting all consumers.

The need for consumer protection builds upon PK’s previous two principles for the PSTN transition. The first principle states that everyone has the right to be a consumer of the phone network and that phone carriers have a duty to bring service to all Americans. The second principle promotes competition and interconnection between carriers, meaning that anyone should be able to place a call to another person, regardless of which phone company they use. Interconnection and other competition policies lead to a healthy, consumer-friendly market for phone service. Yet competition between carriers does not always guarantee all aspects of consumer protection. PK’s third principle ensures that all consumers are protected from potential harm dealt to them by their phone service providers, by enforcing privacy principles, truth-in-billing, and safety from predatory practices. It is important that the consumer protections ensured in current communications law are updated to reflect the IP-based infrastructure of the future. Today, the law explicitly protects consumers’ confidential information, and the FCC has relied on its authority over the traditional phone network to extend this protection to VoIP (voice over internet protocol) services. But the FCC has jurisdiction over other safeguards like “slamming rules” and “cramming rules” that they have yet to apply to VoIP providers.