Washington State Senator Kevin Ranker (D-Orcas Island) is pushing a bill this session that, as he puts it, will force Comcast—or whoever your service provider is—to pay you.

Under the Telecommunications Consumer Fairness Act, which is sponsored by Ranker and cosponsored by a broad bipartisan group of 24 fellow lawmakers, telecommunications companies will be required to provide a credit on a consumer’s bill for service outages caused by the company that total more than 12 hours in a monthly billing cycle.

“If a person is late paying their bill, you can bet their cable, internet, cell phone or landline provider will let you know about it,” Ranker said. “Isn’t it only fair that if those same providers fail to provide a service consumers have paid for, that the consumers are compensated when that service isn’t provided? I think so, and that’s what this bill is about.”

Looks like originally, people would be compensated under this bill for outages of four hours or more. Now, compensation begins with outages of twelve hours or more. Still: Right overall direction! Now let's see if it passes.