Telecommunication

[Commentary] The way governments in the United States treat telecommunications providers, you would think that the providers’ services came with a Surgeon General warning. Generally speaking, governments impose greater taxes on activities they want to discourage, such as smoking, or on things that their citizens are less likely to consume, such as rental cars. But telecom falls into neither category. So why is telecom taxed so heavily? And why are there so many different taxes and fees that some consultants and lawyers have built careers out of helping telecom companies decipher how much to pay and which forms to file? If we want more competition and more infrastructure, we should lower businesses costs by eliminating many of these taxes. At a minimum we need to continue to protect the internet from taxes and be diligent to not allow taxes and fees to slow down the internet of things.

[Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida; he served on President trump’s FCC transition team]

For years, consumers have warred with telemarketers for ringing their landline phones at all hours of the day. Pretty soon, though, they might find their mobile voicemail under the same sort of assault — that is, if the Republican Party and others have their way.

The GOP’s leading campaign and fundraising arm, the Republican National Committee, has quietly thrown its support behind a proposal at the Federal Communications Commission that would pave the way for marketers to auto-dial consumers’ cellphones and leave them prerecorded voicemail messages — all without ever causing their devices to ring. Under current federal law, telemarketers and others, like political groups, aren’t allowed to launch robocall campaigns targeting cellphones unless they first obtain a consumer’s written consent. But businesses stress that it’s a different story when it comes to “ringless voicemail” — because it technically doesn’t qualify as a phone call in the first place. In their eyes, that means they shouldn’t need a customer or voter’s permission if they want to auto-dial mobile voicemail inboxes in bulk pre-made messages about a political candidate, product or cause. And they want the FCC to rule, once and for all, that they’re in the clear. Their argument, however, has drawn immense opposition from consumer advocates.