Introduction

The Coalition to Ensure Responsible Billing (CERB) respectfully submits these comments in response to the Nevada Public Utilities Commission's Proposed Rulemaking to expand the application of the Consumer Bill of Rights. CERB is composed of seven billing clearinghouses that work to ensure the integrity and increase the clarity of the local telephone bill, while preserving competition for the telecommunications services of third parties that are billed on the local bill. The members of CERB are Billing Concepts, Federal TransTel, HBS Billing Services, ILD Teleservices, Integretel, OAN Services, and USP&C.

CERB was formed with a pro-consumer, pro-competitive mission, and as such CERB supports the Commission's goal of protecting consumers and ensuring that they receive vital services. CERB has been working since 1998 to improve the clarity and veracity of the local telephone bill. CERB has also developed strict Anti-cramming Consumer Protection Standards of Practice to promote responsible practices within the industry and to protect consumers from unauthorized charges. CERB members adhere to these standards and work to ensure that consumers are not billed for charges they have not authorized. CERB believes that consumer protections such as CERB's industry effort and the Federal Communications Commission's Truth-in-Billing Rules help to ensure that consumers receive bills that are understandable and reflect charges they expect.

Offering consumers the option to have authorized charges reflected on their local telephone bill advances consumer choice, convenience, and competition. As such, CERB opposes the proposal that local telephone companies be precluded from billing for services not provided directly by them.

LECs Should Not Be Precluded from Billing for
Telecommunications Companies

The Commission poses the following question for the June 15, 2001, workshop:

Question 8. What impact would it have on your company if Staff were to propose a rule that prohibited local exchange companies from billing for any services other than those provided directly by that company?

If local exchange carriers (LECs) were no longer able to represent charges from other companies on their bills, CERB member billing clearinghouses would not be able to provide their services as aggregators to telecommunications vendors in Nevada. Furthermore, consumers would not enjoy the convenience of having competitive telecommunications services billed on their local telephone bills.

Billing clearinghouses play a critical role in bringing convenience and competition to consumers. Clearinghouses consolidate charges from many competing telecommunications providers and contract with the LECs for the charges to appear on consumers' monthly local telephone bills. Such arrangements result in benefits to consumers and to competition.

Consumers benefit from third party billing on the local bill because such a consolidated bill is more convenient to pay. Many non-LEC charges that appear on local telephone bills are extremely small, such as charges for collect, third party, or dial-around (10-10-XXX) calls. It would be inefficient and bothersome to the consumer for these charges to be billed individually through separate bills, depending on which company carried the call.

Not only is it a great benefit for consumers to pay for several charges through a single bill, it also stimulates competition. Right now, there is a robust market for competitive Internet access services and other enhanced services such as voice mail and caller ID boxes. LECs offer these services, as do competitive providers. Increasingly, however, LECs are leveraging their monopolies in the local telephone market into the market for these competitive services. This leverage would be enhanced if consumers could only receive a consolidated bill by purchasing exclusively LEC-provided services. Allowing competitive telecommunications providers to utilize the LEC billing platform is good for competition, and provides more choice and better prices for consumers.

While it has been suggested that non-LEC telecommunications providers could bill their services by alternative methods, it is the experience of CERB members that as a practical matter alternatives are not feasible for billing and collection of many telecommunications services. Utilizing credit card bills, for example, does not permit adequate itemization of telephone calls. Further, the credit card bill, unlike the telephone bill, is not ubiquitous. Americans use a variety of credit cards, and some have no credit card at all. Nor is direct billing by service providers always a viable option. Direct billing is usually economically infeasible for smaller competitive providers and those that need to bill only small and intermittent charges, for which the charge may actually be less than the cost of issuing a bill. In such cases, loss of access to the local bill could result in the service no longer being offered. Further, companies that provide dial around (10-10-XXX) services, or operator services such as third number billed, collect or calling card calls have no business relationship with the billed party and subsequently have no billing name and address information required for billing the call. Only through the LEC is it possible to locate the end-user for billing. Finally, consumers clearly prefer to see all their telecommunications charges on a single bill. Thus, contracting for LEC billing and collection is the only realistic alternative for many telecommunications providers. Without LEC billing, many services would be less available, and likely more expensive and complicated for consumers.

With no access to the LEC bill and no realistic alternatives for billing, many service providers would exit the market, thus denying consumers the benefits of competition, more choices, better services, and lower prices. Given these facts, and the fact that consumers clearly prefer to see all their communications charges on a single bill, the Commission should not pursue a rule that would deny consumers the option to have non-LEC charges included on their local telephone bills.

Conclusion

In order to protect consumer choice and competition, the Commission should not preclude LECs from billing for unaffiliated entities on local telephone bills.

		 	Respectfully submitted,



		 	Gary D. Slaiman
		 	Kristine DeBry
		 	SWIDLER BERLIN SHEREFF FRIEDMAN, LLP
		 	3000 K Street, N.W., Suite 300
		 	Washington, D.C.  20007
		 	(202) 424-7707
		 	Counsel for Coalition to Ensure Responsible Billing



June 1, 2001