NARUC plans two surveys to measure telecom effects and concerns throughout the states, members said during the group’s Baltimore meeting. It expects to send out a short survey “within the next few weeks” to state public utility staff to ask their viewpoint and concerns, Colorado Public Utilities Commission Telecom Chief Lynn Notarianni said Sunday. The goal is to identify the “meaningful topics” among commissions and use these to focus NARUC priorities. The results will potentially inform white papers and panels at the next NARUC meeting in Washington, D.C., she said. The association’s research affiliate, the National Regulatory Research Institute, is sending out its own survey “within the next week or so,” said NRRI Principal Sherry Lichtenberg. The institute will revisit deregulated states to see how the deregulation has affected them since the last NRRI report, she said. “If you're in a state that’s been deregulated, I'm going to be coming to you and asking some questions,” she told telecom subcommittee staff.
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments plans to release its report on Verizon’s summer 911 failures Wednesday, said District of Columbia Public Service Commission Policy Advisory Cary Hinton at NARUC’s Baltimore meeting. Hinton is a member of the task force of D.C. area officials and 911 directors devoted to producing the report. The document focuses on the events following the June 29 derecho storm that hit the mid-Atlantic. The report should be posted online that day, Hinton told us.
The FCC plans to move forward on text-to-911 “very soon,” said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Turetsky Sunday at NARUC’s Baltimore meeting. Verizon and AT&T have voiced support and said they want to develop text-to-911 on a “large scale” in 2013, he said. Lives have been saved in state trials, he added, describing in detail how the system worked in Vermont. “There was a one-word text that was sent--it said ’suicide,'” Turetsky told the telecom subcommittee. “The 911 PSAP [public safety answering point] talked to the company, tracked down the likely address of the sender, and they saved his life. He was hanging, and they cut him down before he died.” Turetsky called the incident a “success story” for text-to-911, and also described the system working in a case of domestic abuse. Lives are at stake, he said, adding that he’s personally invested in making the system function: “If you detect a little bit of passion in my voice, you're right."
The FCC is “actively working” among stakeholders to “tweak” the quantile regression analysis that has caused so much controversy in the past year, said Wireline Bureau official Nicholas Alexander. The agency introduced the analysis as a way of determining high-cost support benchmarks in November 2011 and kicked it off this past July, which state regulators and telcos have argued create regulatory uncertainty and chill broadband investment. The FCC is aware of the concerns, Alexander told the telecom subcommittee at NARUC’s Baltimore meeting Sunday. At the same meeting Monday, Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach said she couldn’t tell the telecom subcommittee whether any changes were “imminent.” But “a lot of very smart people have been spending an awful lot of time” looking at the rule’s effects and possible improvements, she said. Alexander also discussed concerns that study area boundaries were off. The FCC has a process for expediting waiver requests regarding boundaries, and has acted on four of those, he said.
The FCC will act on its Lifeline broadband pilot before long, a Wireline Bureau official said. “I expect to have an order out very soon that will set forth who the projects are, where they're going to be,” Nicholas Alexander told NARUC’s telecom subcommittee Sunday in Baltimore. The FCC is in the final stages of selecting the participants, and worked closely with “most of these applicants to poke and probe and make sure we're all on the same page,” he said. The FCC is in the “final stages of review” on its Lifeline broadband pilot, bureau Chief Julie Veach told the telecom subcommittee Monday. The FCC received 26 applications for the pilot, which is focused on “broadband providers who are testing different ways they could increase broadband adoption,” she said. Veach cited a look at digital literary, different speeds, prices, data caps and other elements. The FCC is focused on producing good data to inform permanent implementation of a Lifeline broadband program, she said.
The FCC’s Rural Health Care Program budget for 2013 is 18 percent lower than the 2012 budget, Florida Public Service Commission Chairman Ronald Brisé said Monday at NARUC’s meeting in Baltimore. He credited the savings to better contracting, speaking on behalf of the Universal Service Administrative Co.
Canada wants ITU-R to study the idea of the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference allocating 1695-1700 MHz to the mobile service on a co-primary basis, it said in a submission. Some administrations in the Americas consider the band 1695-1710 MHz a possible extension to the existing commercial mobile broadband services above 1710 MHz, it said. Frequencies near the proposed range were identified for fast-track consideration in the U.S. broadband plan. The band 1690-1700 MHz is allocated to the meteorological aids and meteorological-satellite (Metsat), space-to-Earth, on a co-primary basis in all three ITU regions, it said. The band 1700-1710 MHz is allocated to the fixed, Metsat, space-to-Earth, and mobile services on a co-primary basis in all three regions, it said. The band 1710-1930 MHz is allocated to the fixed and mobile services on a co-primary basis in all three regions, it said. It would therefore be beneficial to study the feasibility of allocating the band 1695-1700 MHz to the mobile service on a co-primary basis in all three regions, it said.
Liberty Global said it and Searchlight Capital Partners completed their acquisition of San Juan Cable, which does business in Puerto Rico as OneLink Communications. The deal was reached in June (CD June 28 p19).
Correction: Dish Network signed a new wholesale service agreement with ViaSat for its ViaSat-1 satellite in January, renewing a pact that expired in August (CD Nov 8 p17).
The FCC’s new rule allowing cable operators with all-digital systems to begin encrypting their basic service tier (CD Oct 16 p6) will take effect Dec. 10, a notice in the Federal Register said (http://xrl.us/bnyuox).