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                                                   SENATE BILL NO. 3431

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State of Washington                              49th Legislature                              1985 Regular Session

By Senators Goltz, Moore, Owen, McManus, Bailey and McCaslin

Read first time 1/30/85 and referred to Committee on Energy and Utilities.

AN ACT Relating to local telephone service; amending RCW 80.04.130; and adding a new section to chapter 80.36 RCW.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

        Sec. 1.  Section 80.04.130, chapter 14, Laws of 1961 as amended by section 2, chapter 3, Laws of 1984 and RCW 80.04.130 are each amended to read as follows:

          (1) ((Except as provided in subsection (3) of this section,)) Whenever any public service company shall file with the commission any schedule, classification, rule or regulation, the effect of which is to change any rate, charge, rental or toll theretofore charged, the commission shall have power, either upon its own motion or upon complaint, upon notice, to enter upon a hearing concerning such proposed change and the reasonableness and justness thereof, and pending such hearing and the decision thereon the commission may suspend the operation of such rate, charge, rental or toll for a period not exceeding ten months from the time the same would otherwise go into effect, and after a full hearing the commission may make such order in reference thereto as would be provided in a hearing initiated after the same had become effective.

          (2) At any hearing involving any change in any schedule, classification, rule or regulation the effect of which is to increase any rate, charge, rental or toll theretofore charged, the burden of proof to show that such increase is just and reasonable shall be upon the public service company.

          (((3) The implementation of mandatory local measured telephone service is a major policy change in available telephone service.  The commission shall not approve, prior to June 1, 1985, any filings which are under suspension as of February 16, 1984, which are awaiting an order by the commission, or which are filed on or after February 16, 1984, if the filing involuntarily requires any telephone user to pay for all outgoing local telephone calls based on time and/or distance.  As to any such filing, the requirements in subsection (1) of this section for the commission to act on that filing within ten months from the date the filing would otherwise go into effect are suspended under this subsection from February 16, 1984, until June 1, 1985.  This subsection shall not apply to any service such as land, marine, or air mobile service, or any  like service that has traditionally been offered on a measured-service basis.))

NEW SECTION. Sec. 2.  A new section is added to chapter 80.36 RCW to read as follows:

          (1) The commission shall not approve a telephone tariff, for any class of customers, that involuntarily requires a telephone customer to pay for local telephone calls based on one or more of the following elements:  Frequency of calls, duration, time of day, or distance, to be referred to in this section as "local measured service."  The commission shall not approve any telephone tariff that includes optional local measured service unless (a) the rate for the optional local measured service is sufficient to defray all costs that must be incurred to implement the service, including the costs of measuring and billing, and (b) the price differential between flat rate and local measured service is based on verifiable differences in the costs of providing those services.   A telephone company shall not be required to offer optional local measured service if the implementation of the service results in increased rates for any other customer of the telephone company who does not use the local measured service.

          (2) This section does not apply to any service such as land, marine, or air mobile service, or any  like service that has traditionally been offered on a measured-service basis.

          (3) For the purposes of this section, "local" means the nontoll calling area available to any telephone subscriber on January 1, 1985.  The commission may, upon request by the telephone company to alter their local calling area for any subscribers it serves, approve or revise the local calling area if the alteration is fair to all affected subscribers and each subscriber affected by the alteration will have nontoll access to not less than a like local calling area of approximately the same geographical size and not less than the same number of telephone subscribers.