The California Public Utilities Commission should extend right-of-way rules of commercial mobile radio services (CMRS) to wireless pole attachments by CLECs, the Wireless Infrastructure Association said in a petition Monday. A WIA spokesman said the association planned to filed a motion Tuesday to consolidate the request with a California Cable and Telecommunications Association petition seeking the same thing but for wireless pole attachments by cable companies (see 1607210030). “The same legal and policy arguments supporting the extension of wireless attachment rights apply to cable operators and CLECs alike,” WIA said in an emailed copy of the motion. In a February decision granting nondiscriminatory access to carriers, CPUC recognized “there is no obvious reason why” the revised rules shouldn’t apply to CLECs and cable companies, WIA said in the petition. The wireless pole attachments of CMRS carriers are similar to those proposed to be installed by CLECs, WIA said. Extending the rules will enhance competition and promote broadband deployment, it said.
NARUC said it's postponing Lifeline Awareness Week in September due to new FCC rules that extend the USF low-income subsidies to broadband service and streamline the program's administration, which affects state regulatory oversight (see 1603310056). “It will take time for carriers and states, especially those with matching programs, to adjust to the Lifeline changes instituted by the FCC. To avoid increasing consumer confusion by providing outdated information, we have chosen to postpone the 2016 awareness week,” said NARUC President Travis Kavulla in a release Monday. NARUC and some states are challenging the new process for designating national Lifeline broadband providers that allows parties to bypass state eligible telecom carrier reviews (see 1606030053 and 1607010057).
The California Public Utilities Commission will collect public feedback on the California LifeLine program and proposed changes (docket R.11-03-013) in field hearings over the next month, the PUC said in a news release emailed Wednesday. CPUC held its first LifeLine public participation hearing Thursday afternoon in Lucerne, with more hearings planned Sept. 6 in Montebello, Sept. 14 in King City and Sept. 20 in Santa Cruz, it said. The CPUC also recently announced field hearings about intrastate rural call completion issues since Frontier Communications' acquisition of Verizon’s wireline business in the state (see 1608170036).
The FCC should postpone the effective date of new Lifeline federal eligibility criteria and obligation to offer broadband service under the low-income program to Dec. 31, 2017, or 12 months after approval by the Office of Management and Budget, the Michigan Public Service Commission said in a letter Tuesday to the commission in docket 11-42. The PSC supported that aspect of a USTelecom petition for reconsideration (see 1608090023). “The MPSC has similar concerns as those expressed by USTelecom regarding the effective date of the new federal eligibility criteria and its impact on state laws, rules and orders with programs that differ from the new federal eligibility criteria,” the state commission said. “Michigan is one of the states in which the state eligibility criteria for the state discount are now different than the new federal criteria. … Postponing the effective date of the federal eligibility criteria will provide a better opportunity for parties to address the differences between state and federal Lifeline programs, obtain answers to the numerous questions that still remain, and also provide additional time for all parties to work together to ensure a smooth, efficient, and effective transition.” States have sued the FCC over the order, challenging the creation of a federal eligible telecom carrier process and pre-emption of state commission authority to designate ETCs (see 1607270020).
The California Senate amended and passed bills on dig once and Lifeline reimbursement claims and sent them back to the Assembly. The Senate voted 39-0 Tuesday to pass AB-1549, but amended the dig-once bill to relax some of its requirements on the state’s Department of Transportation (Caltrans). The bill still requires Caltrans to notify broadband companies about highway construction projects so they can install broadband conduit as part of each project, but the Senate removed language saying Caltrans would be required to install fiber broadband conduit itself if no broadband company offers to help. Instead, Caltrans would have to consult with stakeholders on or before Jan. 1, 2018, to “develop guidelines to facilitate the installation of broadband conduit on state highway rights-of-way,” the amended bill said. The amendment also removed a requirement that Caltrans maintain an inventory on a centralized database of all broadband conduits housing fiber cables owned by the department, located on state highways and installed on or after Jan. 1, 2017. The database would have been available upon request to broadband companies or organizations. The Senate also voted 39-0 to pass an amended AB-2570, requiring the California Public Utilities Commission to adopt a portability freeze rule for the state Lifeline program by Jan. 15. That requirement replaced language prohibiting the CPUC from reimbursing phone companies for Lifeline claims to new subscribers who enrolled for Lifeline service with another telco within the previous 60 days.
U.S. District Court in Atlanta closed a 911 fee remittance lawsuit against Comcast while the Georgia Court of Appeals hears related cases involving AT&T and EarthLink (see 1608040022). Cobb and Gwinnett counties sued Comcast in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, alleging the cable company failed to bill, collect, report and remit the appropriate amount of 911 charges from customers. The cable ISP asked the court to hit the brakes to see what happened in the other case. In an order (in Pacer) last week, Judge Amy Totenberg agreed it appeared the state appeals court “will render a decision on significant issues of state law that may have a significant or dispositive impact on the outcome” of the Comcast case. “Because the Georgia Court of Appeals has in fact decided to review a case that is virtually identical to these matters, the Court agrees with Defendants that it is proper to refrain from deciding the motions to dismiss prior to the Court of Appeals’ decision,” she wrote.
A fiber cut in central New York affecting landline and wireless communications spurred an investigation by the Department of Public Service. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) asked DPS to find out what led to the disruption in parts of four counties that began mid-afternoon Monday and continued Tuesday morning, said a DPS news release. The disruption affected 1,500 customers of several telecom companies including Verizon, Frontier Communications and Windstream, the department said. A preliminary review found the outage was caused by damage to an underground Verizon fiber cable in Stockbridge, which is used for local phone service and transport services of other providers, DPS said. Repair is taking longer due to the location of the cable along the roadway, it said. There was no impact to 911 centers, it said. “Our investigation will seek to determine the root cause of the outage and other underlying facts in an effort to understand how this occurred and help prevent future outages,” said DPS CEO Audrey Zibelman. The investigation is expected to take several weeks and also will scrutinize Verizon’s response to the incident and company communications with emergency responders, DPS said. Verizon late Monday located a cut to its underground fiber cable outside Oneida, and restored service at 1:34 p.m. Tuesday, a company spokesman said. Windstream customers in Munnsville lost long-distance and 911 services Monday due to the fiber cut; the company rerouted 911 calls to a local fire station Tuesday morning, its spokesman said. A Frontier spokesman said, “Some of our customers in Central New York experienced service issues due to the Verizon fiber cut and we are currently investigating the impact.”
The California Public Utilities Commission approved a $7.7 million broadband grant while rescinding about $4.5 million for five previous grants awarded to now-stalled projects. The CPUC unanimously approved both items at its Thursday meeting. The $7.7 million grant under the California Advanced Services Fund will help pay for construction of a last-mile fiber broadband project in Occidental, estimated to bring 1 Gbps speeds to 458 households in a currently unserved area. The CPUC also agreed on a resolution taking back grants from five stalled projects covering parts of the Riverside, Sonoma, Mendocino, Monterey and Shasta counties.
Phone companies will face automatic daily fines of up to $25,000 in California for failure to meet service quality measures, ruled the Public Utilities Commission at its Thursday meeting. The CPUC passed the order in a 3-2 vote, with the two dissenting commissioners supporting an alternate proposed decision. Under the approved decision, phone companies will face the fines if they fail to meet the commission’s metrics for (1) out-of-service repair interval, (2) customer trouble reports and (3) answer time for trouble reports and billing and non-billing inquiries. The order requires telcos to submit federally mandated outage reports to the Communications Division. Companies can suspend accrued fees if they make investments in service quality in an amount equal to twice the fine, it said. The alternate proposed decision similarly imposed $25,000 daily automatic fines, but the fines wouldn't start to accrue until a company failed to meet the standards for three consecutive months. “Our decision today provides additional protection for those who have traditional landline telephone service, and it also calls for continued monitoring of the Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding on rural outages, and allows for workshops on how to deal with 911 service and other safety related issues,” said CPUC President Michael Picker. “There are many other actions underway that will continue our efforts to look at telecommunication issues, including a competition study, and a network exam. Clearly we’re not at the end of the discussion." Commissioner Catherine Sandoval, who wrote the alternate proposal, said the decision "advances the CPUC’s work to protect communities and compliance with California law.” At the meeting, however, Sandoval said she would soon release a dissenting statement.
The New York Public Service Commission should reject utilities’ claims that wireless companies face no barriers attaching equipment to poles, the Wireless Infrastructure Association said in PSC docket 16-M-0330. WIA earlier this month supported a CTIA petition to apply existing pole attachment requirements to wireless providers so the industry can quickly deploy small cells and distributed antenna systems (DAS) that are critical to 5G services (see 1608020029). In replies Monday, WIA said utilities “fail to recognize that their costs for wireless attachments are not the only economic barrier to broadband deployment. Many municipalities have also sought fees to access public rights of way that were never imposed on the utilities in deploying their own plant and infrastructure and which are improper relative to the limited municipal authority reserved by federal and State law.” But New York utilities said jointly the wireless industry testimony failed to convince them there’s a problem. The utilities said “it is clear that CTIA and the other wireless telecommunications providers have not met the burden for the relief sought in this proceeding.” They said wireless commenters still haven’t “provided demonstrable evidence that would support a new generic Commission proceeding concerning wireless attachments.” Doing nothing isn't an option, CTIA said. “If the Joint Utilities’ unabashed invitation to do nothing were accepted by the Commission, New York would find itself in a place where the utilities’ self-interest reigned supreme over the public interest, denying New Yorkers the benefits of advanced mobile broadband deployment.”