I've been tracking down the actual authors of SB1700 and have now received independent confirmation from several sources that this state law wasn't written by a legislator at all. It now appears that SBC lobbyists are directly responsible for the language of the law -- in other words, this law appears to have been written, word-for-word by the major telecom industry that it's supposed to regulate. If this proves to be true (and I'm still looking for confirmation on the individual names and affiliations of the law's authors), it would represent an incredibly cynical machination on the part of the telecom incumbents and any legislator who supports this bill.

The Citizens Utility Board [1] has just released an easy-to-fill-out online form that will send a fax/e-mail to your elected representatives about SB1700. As I've previously reported [2], SB1700 is an anti-consumer, heap-of-dung-of-a-bill that pretty much eliminates all of our rights as end-users and protects the telecom incumbents from any repercussions for unjustly and unfairly ripping us off.

If you have any information on the law's authors, please let me know.