You remember slamming? That’s the practice of switching a landline subscriber’s phone service without permission. While this carrier thievery still goes on, there are Federal statutes protecting against unauthorized changes to a phone plan, and for fining misbehaving players. Then there’s the deregulated world of VoIP, where all that slamming stuff is still legal.
In 2009, the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affair Bureau ruled in favor of Mediacom, a VoIP provider, deciding that it had not violated any laws when it switched a Verizon customer. Somewhere in this FCC order releasing Mediacom of any liability, the Consumer Bureau mentioned that all those nit-picky rules about requiring third-party verification when switching a customer doesn’t apply to VoIP.
The reason? VoIP providers are not common carriers, the FCC language for anyone who does old-fashioned telecommunications.
So … yesterday the Consumer Bureau re-affirmed that VoIP providers can’t be held to antiquated slamming rules. The FCC denied a slamming complaint lodged against, this time, Verizon for the simple reason that it involved this carrier’s FIOS offering, which is their fiber-based VoIP service.
In their words, “the Commission’s slamming rules currently do not encompass VoIP service. We find that Verizon did not violate our carrier change rules.”
And there you have it.
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