IP Transition Trials Will Require Functioning 911, Encourage Broadband in Rural Areas
The framework for the IP transition trials, which the FCC is set to vote on Thursday (CD Jan 27 p7), will place certain conditions on any proposed trials, said FCC and industry officials in interviews this week. They said there would need to be a TDM backup system in case the trial doesn’t work. It will also be crucial to maintain access to 911 in any trial, they said. In addition to trials looking at switching from TDM to IP services, the FCC will also encourage trial participants to think about ways of getting broadband to rural areas, said agency and industry officials.
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Industry officials briefed by agency staff said they have been told of “conditions” that any trial would have to meet, as well as “presumptions” that they might be able to get waived. For example, one industry official said, while a condition would be that 911 needs to work, a “presumption” might be that state public utility commission rules would need to apply too. An FCC spokesman had no comment.
Chairman Tom Wheeler echoed the importance of 911, during his talk at the State of the Net Address Tuesday. (See related story below in this issue.) “If we want broadband to grow and flourish, it has to be able to provide” services like 911, Wheeler said. “Nobody’s going to sign up for broadband if they can’t get 911. Nobody’s going to sign up for broadband if their ‘Help. I've fallen down!’ button doesn’t work.” The FCC needs to say that, for broadband to grow and realize its full potential, there’s a group of expectations it has to meet, Wheeler said.
One area of FCC interest is how to monitor the impact of potential trials, said an industry official. Wheeler on Tuesday also discussed the importance of having a measurement capability to establish a set of metrics that allow one to draw conclusions. That’s how the trials will be structured, he said: The commission’s attitude will be one of “God bless. Go at it. Use your best judgment."
"They're not technical trials,” Wheeler said. “We do not need trials to figure out how to build out IP networks. They work. We know how to do that. What we do need to do is understand what happens when that’s the network: That’s everything we're relying on. How do we make sure those basic values that are in the network compact transfer over?"
Another section of the upcoming item involves rural broadband, said industry and agency officials. The FCC could use its unspent reserves from the Connect America Fund and entertain proposals on how to deploy broadband in unserved rural areas, industry officials said. The proposal would differentiate between price cap and rate-of-return areas, but in both kinds of areas, a company could come in and propose a fiber buildout to serve a certain number of unserved locations in a census block at a certain price, said an industry official. It’s uncertain how this plan would interplay with current CAF funding, including Phase I, Phase II and the Remote Area Fund, the official said. If done correctly, it’s got promise in terms of injecting funds into areas where it’s really needed, the official said.