California Senate to Get Bill to End Warm Line Requirement

Now AT&T and other telcos say the California law may be costing them more than $100 million yearly and draining local emergency service agency and state government budgets. Warm line laws require that telcos maintain fictitious numbers so public safety access point (PSAP) personnel can pinpoint locations emitting calls to 911. Mandated durations vary. In Maine lines must stay warm for 90 days, after which carriers can shut them down and reclaim the numbers. New York and Florida require two weeks of warm line. In California, a warm line is forever -- unless the state enacts SB 1375, which would clip the mandate at 120 days.

Warm-line advocates say California’s mandate guarantees access to 911. Foes say warm lines can’t be a safety net and that deregulation and technology have left them obsolete and a burden. With ever more Californians moving to wireless or VoIP service, critics say, the state has seen warm lines multiply exponentially. They say warm lines shouldn’t be offered as an automatic safety tool to the indigent when a small sum buys Lifeline phone service.

The lengthening warm line census brought a surge in false alarms caused by short-circuits as all-but-dormant lines deteriorate. Emergency crews must answer 911 calls, and dead-head runs for phantom calls sap responder budgets, they said. California’s Public Utility Commission, which studied the phantom 911 call phenomenon, has acknowledged the problem.

SB-1375 is backed by a coalition of telcos joined by cable telecom providers and some state and local law enforcement and public safety officials. Opposing the change is The Utility Reform Network (TURN), whose allies include police and fire chiefs. AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, SureWest and other telcos in the coalition say warm lines are a large, costly and growing drag on them and on the state. TURN says before California allows telcos to drop warm lines the Public Utility Commission should study the phenomenon in detail.

There’s no way to determine the annual cost to California of phantom 911 calls, since each safety agency handles calls differently, bill sponsor Price said. “But it’s certain that without this reform the problem and expense to the state and to local public safety agencies will continue to grow,” he told us. “Look at the recent announcement in Oakland, where they're laying off more than 80 police officers and stating that some 911 calls may be directed to an online source to file a police report. First responders are under tremendous resource constraints -- we must address this problem. And as a matter of policy, it is the state legislature that must act now."

TURN characterizes SB-1375 as an industry-orchestrated gambit tooled to suit telcos and other providers while shunting aside consumer needs. “We see this as a consumer issue,” a spokesman said. “AT&T rewrote the bill to say that there would be no guarantee of a warm line at residences where there are no customers. AT&T claims that there are two million warm lines it considers inactive and that they expect there to be four million by 2012. They want to disconnect these lines en masse."

Before allowing a mass disconnection, the state should study the number of 911 calls and warm line usage, as well as the cost of maintenance, the TURN spokesman said. “We should have the PUC investigate, because there are no data,” he said. “AT&T gets money to maintain warm lines from the public purpose charge that consumers pay. If they aren’t spending that money to maintain those lines, what is happening to it? Somebody owes consumers money."

According to Price, no part of the 911 surcharge covers warm line expenses. “The 911 surcharge is used to provide funding for three things: the 911 network, the 911 database and the 911 interface at the PSAPs,” he said. “The surcharge is adjusted annually by the State 911 Office. SB-1375 would have no impact on the 911 surcharge."

California pays more than $2 million yearly for the warm line records in the 911 database, a cost expected to grow by almost $400,000 annually, Price said. The issue is not only the arrangement’s “substantial” cost “but the fact that the current system is not serving consumers well,” he said. The 1995 mandate “has long outlived its intended purpose -- to provide a transition service -- and, because the law is outdated, what once was good policy has become a problem,” he said. “Due to the technology and service choices customers are making, a permanent regulation on warm lines serves no purpose,” he told us by e-mail. “Leaving warm lines open FOREVER is not a reasonable solution. Warm lines are not a public safety net, but they do create a public safety hazard when they create phantom 911 calls."

A chorus from industry also disputes the need for more study. Frontier, whose chief stock in trade is wireline networks it buys from telcos quitting that arena, has followed the warm-line issue since before the Price bill debuted, said Charlie Born, who manages government and external affairs for the company in Nevada and California. “Warm lines are very important to Frontier,” he said. Since 2007 Frontier’s active landline census in California has shrunk from 155,000 lines to 120,000, he said. “It’s a very challenging situation,” Born said. “When Comcast or another cable company comes in, they literally cut the connection, because customers moving to cable want their connections at the same physical location as before. So we don’t know what happens to that line. A warm line is not a viable public safety mechanism, and we don’t want people thinking that it is. My gut feeling is that there’s little to no awareness of warm lines in that regard."

Frontier hasn’t calculated its warm line costs, but feels them nonetheless, Born said. “We have to obtain and maintain fictitious phone numbers, which plays into the number exhaustion phenomenon, and the state has to maintain a database of those fictitious numbers,” he said. “As we disconnect people for not paying their bills, we are seeing that process last 60 to 90 days. We try to get them to go with Lifeline or another alternative."

SB-1375 “would add a robust educational and notification aspect” to the mix by ensuring that customers giving up or losing service get guidance about alternatives, Born said. “Customers being disconnected for not paying their bills would have a warm line at that address for 120 days, which is up from the original 90 days in the draft bill,” he said. “We think it would be better for someone in that situation to sign up with Lifeline for a few dollars a month and be able to make phone calls rather than just have a connection to 911 through a PSAP."

Coalition members see the situation as self-evident, Born said. After a limited study of phantom calls the utility commission acknowledged there is a problem, he said. “And if you do a study, it takes six to 18 months, and then you have to go back to the legislature to change the law. The situation is obvious enough that we should act now. Public safety is our number one concern,” Born said. “California is the only state with a lifetime guarantee of a warm line. It’s true that some people in law enforcement and public safety oppose the law, but many people in those communities, such as the sheriffs and the fire chiefs, are standing with us. The PSAPs were with the coalition at the start, but they came to embrace TURN’s position that it’s not worth even one person being harmed to update the law. We think that’s wrong."

Warm lines use a significant amount of energy, said AT&T lobbyist Kathi Oram. “It’s estimated that those 2 million warm lines we're dealing with now use enough electricity to power 3,000 homes for a year,” she said. She acknowledged the need for a safety net but said warm lines aren’t it. “They're not designed to provide permanent access,” Oram said. “It’s ridiculous to pretend that warm lines can substitute for a real phone. And there’s no way that carriers can test that system. The last 10 or 11 years there’s been a huge trend toward cord-cutting. There are no jacks. There often are no customers. It’s impossible to test lines. The bottom line is that we can’t go on with the status quo."

The 911 surcharge on customer bills goes to the PSAP system, Oram said. “We collect that money,” she said. “We don’t get that money. It’s intended to improve 911 center performance.” Telcos in California could be spending a total of $100 million yearly in warm line-related costs, she said. “There’s no benefit to consumers” from warm lines, they cost industry money and it’s time that California lifted its permanent mandate for them, she said.