LANSING – Those interested in the House version of the Michigan Telecommunications Act rewrite will have three weeks to have their say before the bill moves to the House floor. Rep. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek), chair of the House Energy and Technology Committee, announced Wednesday that he planned two hearings each for the next three weeks with the bill to be reported October 19.

Hearings on the bill (HB 5237) are planned for Tuesday and Wednesday of next week and Wednesday and Thursday of the following two weeks, Nofs said Wednesday after explaining some of the details of the bill as introduced.

The House bill appears to be starting out just as the Senate bill (SB 754) left its committee on Tuesday: with largely bipartisan support. House Committee Minority Vice Chair Rep. Frank Accavitti (D-Eastpointe) praised Mr. Nofs for working with him and his caucus, noting that all of the minority members had signed on as co-sponsors to the legislation.

Among the changes to the bill, which reduces price regulation to basic residential line service with 100 free calls, is elimination of the requirement that all providers offer directory service and deregulation of operator service.

But, while only the basic service would be regulated, providers could not require customers to purchase that regulated service in order to purchase other, unregulated services.

The bill would allow for municipal telephone service under certain conditions, but would prohibit educational institutions from reselling excess capacity on their networks if that would compete with a private provider.

The municipal service provision drew fire Wednesday from the Michigan Municipal League, which called it an effort to reduce customer choice. “For the Michigan Legislature to pass HB 5237 and bow to out-of-state corporate telecommunications companies and crush local efforts to provide this essential service to consumers would be a disservice to every consumer in the state,” said Dan Gilmartin, executive director of the League.

The bill also once again tries to eliminate the end user carrier line charge, a move courts had rejected in the last rewrite of the act. But providers charging the fee would be allowed to ask the Public Service Commission to roll that fee into their base rates when the fee expires January 1, 2007.

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