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Telephone association asks committee to cut PUC assessment for deregulated VoIP and IP services
Summary
Industry witnesses told the committee HB 508 would reduce regulatory assessment burdens on largely deregulated VoIP and IP‑enabled providers and free up funds for broadband build‑out; the Department of Energy provided FY25 fiscal examples and said the change would shift costs to other regulated utility ratepayers.
Representative Harrington introduced HB 508, a bill to reduce the portion of annual Public Utilities Commission assessments charged to accepted local exchange carriers and certain VoIP and IP‑enabled providers from 33% to 10% of gross utility revenue.
Industry witnesses, including Chris Rand (Granite State Communications) and Theresa Rosenberger (counsel for New Hampshire Telephone Association members), said deregulation since 2011 left many carriers with almost no PUC oversight and sparse PUC interaction. They argued the current assessment formula imposes an unnecessary cost on carriers that now invest in broadband deployment to serve rural areas; the carriers asked that assessments be reduced to free capital for network build‑out.
The Department of Energy said it was neutral but provided a fiscal example: for FY25 the DOE assessed $529,764 (the transcript figure) across 26 accepted local exchange carriers; if the assessment base had been 10% instead of 33%, the total for that group would have been $158,697, reducing assessed amounts to that group by roughly $371,000. The department noted that any reduction in assessments for the targeted carriers would be recovered by increasing assessments spread across regulated electric, gas and water utilities; those pass through assessment costs in customer rates.
NHTA representatives emphasized this bill does not eliminate assessments but would better align assessment levels with the limited regulatory services providers receive. The department noted a number of PUC and DOE functions funded by assessments — numbering administration, consumer complaint pathways and program support — and said it had no objection to the bill but supplied the committee with fiscal numbers and a list of activities currently covered by assessment funding.
The committee took testimony without taking a vote.
