A New Face in State Regulation
Appointed to the California Public Utilities Commission by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this past January, Rachelle Chong thinks consumers win with competition, not heavy-handed regulation.
“Nearly one year into her new job, Rachelle Chong is bringing a fresh perspective to the role of state regulators. Wireless Wave recently talked with her about her regulatory philosophy, her thoughts on telecommunications and competition, and a consumer-friendly CPUC initiative.“
Wireless Wave: How do you think your past professional experiences have prepared you for what’s come across your desk at the CPUC?
Commissioner Chong: There’s no question that the federal perspective that I gained as an FCC commissioner in the mid-‘90s has been very helpful in tackling the challenging telecom issues facing the California PUC.
The telecommunications marketplace has changed dramatically through increased com-petition in the last decade, and the relationship between the CPUC and the cus-tomer needs to evolve as well.
I think the CPUC is like many other state regulatory bodies and used to be based on a monopoly-style regulatory model. The agency was very focused on intercarrier disputes and regulating specific landline phone carriers. But now with the introduction of competition, particularly in the wireless marketplace, not to mention CLECs and VoIP, the CPUC needs to do less in terms of regulating carriers and managing the intercarrier relationships, but more in terms of consumer education and enforcement. We need to be more of a referee between competitors.
Wireless Wave: What steps have you taken in that direction?
Commissioner Chong: In March the CPUC issued a consumer protection initiative deci-sion after six years of controversy, most of which predated me. Previously there were PUC rules put in place for a short period of time that were extremely regulatory in nature, especially in light of the competitive telecom marketplace we have in California.
The current Commission took a different approach in March. We thought the market-place was very competitive and that heavy regulation would merely skew the benefits of competition and hinder technology advances. We found that current law was sufficient in the areas of most concern, which were unau-thorized charges on bills, and rooting out ad actors who are cramming or slamming inno-cent consumers.
So, we decided to better enforce our cur-rent consumer protection laws and better serve consumers with complaints. The over-turned Consumer Bill of Rights had introduced more rules, but the agency couldn’t even han-dle the volume of complaints we’d received under the old rules! Our Consumer Affairs Bureau was woefully understaffed, had an outdated database, and faced a backlog of 25,000 unresolved telecom consumer com-plaints. This Commission is doing something about that. We asked for and recently received permission to hire 29 new employees to reduce the complaint backlog and form a new Telecom Fraud unit to go after bad guys.
