The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court, issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Regulatory Bulletin.
TELECOM
California
The PUC has released a draft resolution to increase the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) surcharge effective April 1, 2014. The increase is intended to recover the Fund under-collections in calendar years 2011 to 2013 and to also have funds available to meet new legislative requirements imposed on the program. Comments may be submitted by February 17, 2014. The PUC is scheduled to vote on the resolution at its February 27, 2014, open meeting. TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers watch for a Bulletin once the PUC approves the resolution.
Connecticut
PURA issued a draft order which would allow facilities-based providers to use an industry designed template to report information to PURA during declared emergencies. The report would afford protected treatment of number and duration of customer outages, network equipment failures, and restoration challenges not otherwise identified. In addition, the PUC proposes to withdraw parts of a previous decision because the industry template will enable it to meet its statutory obligations. Comments on the draft order may be submitted by February 7, 2014. If no comments are received, PURA will finalize the draft at its March 18, 2014, meeting.
Washington
The Commission will conduct a status conference on February 26, 2014, so that parties may present their positions on the CenturyLink Petition seeking approval of proposed additions to its non-impaired wire center list for calendar year 2013. Specifically, CenturyLink requests that the Commission approve the addition of CenturyLink’s Yakima Chestnut wire center to its non-impaired wire center list.
FCC
At its January 30, 2014, Open Meeting, the FCC encouraged all wireless providers as well as other “interconnected” text providers (i.e., “over the top” text providers with applications that support sending and receiving text messages to and from phone numbers) to work with the public safety community to support text-to-911 in a timely manner. The FCC noted that the nation’s four largest wireless carriers voluntarily committed to make text-to-911 available to their customers by May 15, 2014, in areas where the 911 call center is prepared to receive texts. The FCC said that if stakeholders develop a satisfactory proposal to support text-to-911, it would only need to codify the solution to ensure that it applies to all providers equally, including new entrants to the marketplace, and gives clarity to the 911 community.
In addition, the FCC adopted a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on a proposed rule that text-to-911 be made available by all text providers by the end of this year. The FCC also seeks comment on several aspects of implementation, particularly relating to the technical ability of “interconnected” text providers to comply with a text-to-911 mandate, as well as longer-term text-to-911 issues.
