California CLECs shouldn’t be fined for service or facility issues of an unaffiliated underlying carrier, said the California Association of Competitive Telecommunications Companies (CalTel). The CLEC association filed a petition, dated Aug. 30 and posted Tuesday, to modify a Public Utilities Commission August service quality order (see 1608180060). Starting Jan. 1, the order requires phone companies to face automatic daily fines of up to $25,000 for failure to meet service quality measures. But CalTel said CLECs should be fined only “if the failure was primarily due to the CLEC’s action or inaction.” The CPUC decision’s “determination that CLECs have contractual recourse against underlying facilities-based carriers that caused the CLEC to fail to meet a service quality measure and be subject to fines is both legally and factually incorrect,” it said.
Google Fiber urged Nashville residents to support “One Touch Make Ready” pole attachments policy under consideration by the city council. The ordinance would speed the rollout of fiber broadband in the city, the company said in a blog post Thursday. The Nashville Metro Council plans to vote on the ordinance Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. CDT at the Metro Courthouse. The meeting will be live-streamed. “We have -- like many of you -- been disheartened by the incredibly slow progress,” Google Fiber Director-National Deployment and Operations Chris Levendos wrote on the blog. He blamed delays on the current make-ready process for pole attachments, in which each existing provider on the pole sends out a separate crew to move its line to make room for a new one. “This may have worked a generation ago when there were only one or two attachers, but it’s extremely time consuming -- not to mention disruptive to residents of Nashville -- to do this with the numerous attachers we have today.” More than half of the 88,000 poles Google needs require make ready work, but only 33 so far are ready to go, said Levendos. The proposed one-touch ordinance would allow the work to be performed in a single visit by a crew approved by the pole owner, he said. “However, some existing providers disagree, and would prefer to keep the current system.” Incumbent telco AT&T recently accused Google of seeking favoritism from governments after running into obstacles deploying fiber (see 1608300057).
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission should allow Windstream objections to Verizon's planned buy of XO Communications, Windstream said in a filing Thursday in docket A-2016-2535279. Verizon and XO had asked to strike the objections because they were filed after the PUC April 25 deadline (see 1608170034). “The Joint Applicants mischaracterize Windstream's Amicus Brief as a protest or intervention, concocting a claim that the brief is in violation of the Commission order regarding those procedures,” Windstream said. Windstream didn’t violate the applicants’ due process rights because its filing was not factual testimony, it said. “Windstream's arguments are, for the most part, legal arguments in connection with which Windstream is not required to submit evidence.” Pennsylvania and New York are the last two state approvals needed by Verizon and XO for their $1.88 billion deal (see 1608250058).
His term is ending, but California Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D) said others may resurrect his California Public Utilities Commission overhaul proposals. In a statement Friday, Gatto said he has “been approached by like-minded reformers with resources to place a more comprehensive set of reforms on the ballot.” State legislators failed to pass Gatto’s CPUC reform bill (AB-2903) before the legislative deadline, punting on a review of how the state regulates telecom among other proposals (see 1609010058). The bill was part of a four-bill compromise package negotiated by Gatto, two state senators and Gov. Jerry Brown (D), but only two of the bills survived the deadline. “My office continues to hear scuttlebutt as to who banded together to kill the landmark CPUC reforms,” Gatto said. “The breach of the reform agreement and the manner in which it was thwarted has only re-confirmed the need for genuine regulatory reform in California.” A Gatto spokesman clarified that the “like-minded reformers” are legislators and nonelected officials. The measures could be moved without legislative action, he said, because under the state’s rules, “one can bypass the legislature by placing an initiative on the ballot.”
The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission delayed mandatory 10-digit dialing in central Indiana’s 317 area code to Oct. 15 from the original Sept. 17 date, it said in an order Wednesday. The Electronic Security Association asked for more time because some alarm companies are behind in preparations to make the switch, the commission said. The commission is overlaying a new area code, 463, for the existing area, because 317 numbers are projected to run out by year-end, it said.
Texas Public Utility Commission staff said it’s “sympathetic” to Comcast concerns that an ongoing right-of-way proceeding about distributed antenna systems could inadvertently affect telecom companies broadly. The matter concerns a complaint by ExteNet, a DAS provider, against the city of Houston for imposing public right-of-way fees. In a notice Tuesday in case 45280, the PUC said it will address the Comcast concern in a statement of position to be entered Sept. 30: “Staff agrees the scope of this case should be limited to whether Chapter 283 applies to Distributed Antenna Systems, and recognizes that a broader ruling may impact the current right-of-way paradigm.” In an Aug. 26 letter, Comcast said the PUC’s decision “could have far-reaching consequences to the municipal right-of-way regime that has been in place in Texas since 1999.” Most telecom utilities including Comcast pay franchise fees on access lines under Chapter 283 of Local Government Code, it said. "If changes are adopted in this proceeding that direct or suggest carriers must instead separately negotiate franchise agreements for services currently covered under Chapter 283, this could have enormous ramifications statewide. … Comcast is concerned that the outcome of this proceeding may inadvertently foreclose the ability of parties to amicably resolve how right-of-way fees are applied to new technologies if the ultimate decisions could be read to apply beyond the DAS system that is the subject of this proceeding.”
With the California legislative session racing to a finish, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed into law a bill aimed at improving call routing of wireless emergency calls. AB-1564 requires commercial mobile radio service providers to provide free access to local 911 service and route calls through the Department of the California Highway Patrol unless an alternate route meets certain requirements. It requires state and local government agencies to determine the most efficient routing of wireless 911 calls, with a statewide review and routing decision-making process to be completed annually. Other bills waiting to be signed include SB-1137, to define ransomware as a form of extortion; SB-745, which requires the California Public Utilities Commission to prioritize unserved housing developments and other changes to grant programs provided by the California Advanced Services Fund; and SB-215 and AB-2168, two parts of a proposed CPUC overhaul (see 1608110007). With a midnight legislative deadline having loomed Wednesday, the legislature was considering several other telecom and CPUC revamp measures. Tuesday, the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee unanimously concurred with Senate amendments to AB-2570, requiring the CPUC adopt a portability freeze rule for the state LifeLine program by Jan. 15, and SB-62, creating a new safety advocate office at the CPUC.
States, the FCC and industry plan extensive outreach to reduce consumer confusion about changes to Lifeline that will allow the USF program for low-income people to get broadband and not just phone service, officials said on a Wednesday webinar staged by the National Regulatory Research Institute, the research arm of NARUC. "We think it's very important that we help in getting the word out … because there will be a lot of confusion," said Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable Commissioner Karen Charles Peterson. Lifeline tops the department’s list for planned outreach efforts, and the state government hopes the low-income program will play a big role in a state effort to increase broadband adoption, she said. The FCC plans to make copious amounts of information available through its website and other outreach venues, said Wireline Bureau Telecommunications Access Policy Division Chief Ryan Palmer. TracFone plans targeted communications to customers rather than a broad and generalized approach, said the company’s Corporate Counsel Stephen Athanson. AT&T sees potential for customer confusion because it will take some time for states to sync their programs with the federal program, said Executive Director-Public Policy Beth Fujimoto. She said the company supports a USTelecom reconsideration request pending at the FCC, including deferring the effective date of the streamlined eligibility criteria to give states more time to make necessary changes (see 1608090023). States won’t find a uniform method to implement the order, said Peterson. "Each state is unique and they're going to have to address it in their own way." The commissioner said one concern of states is what happens to consumers’ ability to call 911 if they're moved from voice to broadband plans. She said the issue is “hard to explain to the average citizen.” Massachusetts plans to work with consumers, industry and the FCC “to make sure a consumer doesn’t have to pick” between voice and broadband, she said.
The Michigan Public Service Commission certified two more counties as “connected” under Connect Michigan, the agency’s public-private partnership with Connected Nation, the PSC said in a news release Wednesday. Genesee and Mason counties join 16 other communities in the state that developed a broadband plan to increase access, adoption and use, the PSC said.
Under fire from state agencies, CenturyLink defended the completeness of a petition for deregulation in each of its 108 exchanges in Minnesota. The ILEC asked the Public Utilities Commission June 30 to be regulated instead as a CLEC because it serves less than 50 percent of households and competitors offer service to at least 60 percent of the households in each exchange. Under a deregulation process established by a recent state law, the PUC has 180 days to address the petition. But in Aug. 15 comments in docket 16-496, the Minnesota Attorney General and the state Department of Commerce separately said CenturyLink didn’t provide enough information to make a decision. They asked for more information showing competition for each local service offered in each exchange, evidence the telco lost customers to competitors over at least the past five years, and a demonstration that competition data it filed is accurate. In a reply Monday, CenturyLink said its petition is complete. "The Agencies’ arguments misread the relevant statute, confuse the distinction between completeness and sufficiency, and should be summarily rejected,” it said. “The statute clearly does not contemplate that all issues … must be unequivocally resolved before a petition is deemed complete. If that were the case, there would be no need for the 180 day review period.” The law allows the PUC to seek more information from the petitioner, but the PUC can’t reject a petition as incomplete for “failure to include information the petitioner was never notified was necessary," the telco said. The state agencies disagreed. “In essence, a carrier filing a petition under this statute must ‘show its work’ in the initial filing in order to have a complete petition for review,” the AG commented Monday. “CenturyLink has not shown its work. As a result, any analysis of the merits of the petition is both premature and impossible, given the lack of detail provided in the petition.” The petition is incomplete, but the PUC should keep the docket open so CenturyLink can file additional information, the department replied. The information sought by the state agencies “is very detailed, and that’s unlike most of the other states that have deregulated,” National Regulatory Research Institute Principal Sherry Lichtenberg emailed us. NRRI is the research arm of NARUC. In most former AT&T states, for example, ILECs could “elect” to have reduced regulation because the laws were predicated on the idea that competition exists, she said. “The Minnesota law seems to be the first that will require such detailed information.”