SB 1215 (Smith/Steidley): Establishes criteria, classification, and fines for the misuse of a telecommunication device. Misuse includes using a device for the purpose of avoiding lawful payment for its use, unlawfully possessing a device, intercepting electronic identification numbers for the purpose of cloning the device, selling telecommunication devices with knowledge that the buyer is doing so for unlawful purposes and manufacture of an unlawful telecommunication device.

SCR 65 (Haney/Voskuhl): Relates to expansion of toll-free calling by creation or expansion of Wide Area Calling Plans (WACP) or Extended Area Service (EAS). States legislative intent that Corporation Commission hold hearings in all regions of the state during 1998 to explain the WACP/EAS rules and rationales, receive suggestions from the citizenry, review and reconsider the rules by March 1, 1999, and treat EAS petitions as automatically approved one year from filing if the Commission has not issued a final order by then.

HB 2836 (Rice/Easley): Clarifies how revenues of pay phone service providers, and payments from pay phone service providers to other telecommunications companies, will be treated under provisions of law which assess fees on telecommunications companies for the funding of the Public Utilities Division of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

HB 3287 (Perry/Robinson): Creates, effective January 1, 1999, the Electronic Records and Signature Act of 1998, the crux of which is that a record or signature, with some exceptions, "shall not be denied legal effect, validity or enforceability solely because it is in [electronic] form." Other parts of the bill, effective immediately, set up a pilot program to find out "how electronic commerce and digital signatures can improve the internal services and operations of state government, and . . . enable and encourage the use of electronic commerce, including digital signatures, in transactions with business . . . ." The Office of State Finance is to be the coordinating agency, and there is to be an Electronic Commerce Pilot Program Steering Committee, which is to file a report by December 15, 1998. The bill also extends the life of the Task Force on Electronic Signature Technology until February 1, 1999.

HCR 1108 (Bastin/Herbert): Urges next legislature to amend HB 1815 of 1997 to strike language authorizing telecommunications carriers to pass through to telephone subscribers the amounts the companies are being assessed for support of the Oklahoma Universal Service Fund. Also asks the companies [meanwhile] to exercise the option of absorbing the costs rather than passing them through.