To speed up the sale of Verizon, the Legislature has agreed to pass the proposed increased funding for the Commonwealth Telecommunications Commission\u2014to be taken from an increase in the company\u2019s annual fees\u2014with no mention whether the increased fee could be passed on to customers or not.<\/p>\n
The House, which deleted the phrase allowing Verizon or any telecommunications company \u201cto pass through such costs to consumers,\u201d earlier rejected the Senate amendment that specifically prohibits the pass-on provision to the public.<\/p>\n
According to Rep. Oscar Babauta yesterday, the Senate, during a conference committee meeting, agreed to just adopt the House version.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met at the conference committee and during our meeting, our Senate counterparts decided to follow the House [version]. They, too, don\u2019t not want to prolong the settlement in relation to the sale of Verizon,\u201d said Babauta. <\/p>\n
Members of the conference committee included senators Diego Songao, Henry San Nicolas, Luis P. Crisostimo, Pete P. Reyes, Joseph Mendiola, and Paul A. Manglona from the Senate; and Reps. Timothy Villagomez, Claudio Norita, Arnold I. Palacios, Joseph Deleon Guerrero, Jesus Lizama, and Janet Maratita from the House.<\/p>\n
Both the CTC and the Verizon earlier told the Legislature that the passage of the CTC funding bill was part of the requirements in the sale of Verizon to Pacific Telecommunications Inc.<\/p>\n
The House, in passing House Bill 14-251 yesterday, adopted the conference committee\u2019s recommendation to delete the phrase \u201csuch charges may not be passed on to consumers.\u201d <\/p>\n
The bill now provides that \u201cthe charges to be imposed on any telecommunications company under CMC section 8327 (a) and (b) shall not exceed 2.5 percent of its annual gross revenues in the Commonwealth in excess of $25,000 up to 20 percent of all charges collected from a telecommunication company\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill provides that the amount (no more than 2.5 percent) collected shall be appropriated to the Attorney General\u2019s Office to be used solely for the purpose of advocating on behalf of CNMI telecom consumers regarding telecom services. <\/p>\n
HB 14-251 aims to amend the existing Telecommunications Act to raise the CTC\u2019s funding from .5 percent to 2.5 percent, restoring CTC\u2019s funding to approximately 60 percent of its previous level.<\/p>\n
The bill also aims to provide funding for a telecom consumer advocacy, to set up a Universal Service Fund, and to provide CTC with discretion for spending a portion of its budget on items to be addressed in CNMI Universal Service fund regulations. <\/p>\n
House members earlier said deleting the pass-on provision does not prohibit a company from passing the cost to the public.<\/p>\n
The House said that the deletion only means that the Legislature is not sanctioning the pass-on provision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To speed up the sale of Verizon, the Legislature has agreed to pass the proposed increased funding for the Commonwealth Telecommunications Commission\u2014to be taken from an increase in the company\u2019s annual fees\u2014with no mention whether the increased fee could be passed on to customers or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}