Ranker Introduces Telecommunications Bill

Sen. Ranker bill will have cable, internet, landline and cellular providers paying you

— from Aaron Wasser, Communications Specialist, Senate Democrats —

A bill sponsored by Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, will bring fairness to the relationship between consumers and their telecommunications providers.

Under the Telecommunications Consumer Fairness Act, which is sponsored by Ranker and cosponsored by a broad bipartisan group of 24 fellow lawmakers, telecommunications companies will be required to provide a credit on a consumer’s bill for service outages caused by the company that total more than 12 hours in a monthly billing cycle.

“If a person is late paying their bill, you can bet their cable, internet, cell phone or landline provider will let you know about it,” Ranker said. “Isn’t it only fair that if those same providers fail to provide a service consumers have paid for that the consumers are compensated when that service isn’t provided? I think so and that’s what this bill is about.”

Under the bill, the amount of the credit consumers receive is based on monthly billing and is pro-rated based on the number of days or portions of days of the outage. Failure to provide the billing credit will be a violation of the Consumer Protection Act.