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
FCC
The FCC is seeking comment on AT&T’s request to discontinue Wideband Analog Service and Wideband Data Service in the AT&T service territories in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. Comments are due March 31, 2014. Absent further FCC action, the AT&T affiliates will be permitted to discontinue Wideband Analog Service and Wideband Data Service in the Service Areas on or after May 1, 2014.
AT&T describes Wideband Analog Service as an analog transmission service offered at bandwidths that include 60-180 kHz, 564-3,084 kHz, 300 Hz-18 kHz, 29-44 kHz or 28-44 kHz. The service is provided between customer designated premises through Serving Wire Center(s) or between customer designated premises and a Telephone Company Hub. AT&T describes Wideband Data Service as one that provides analog transmission of synchronous serial data at the rate of 19.2, 50.0, or 230.4 Kbps, or of asynchronous serial data at 18.75 or 40.8 Kbps. The service is provided between customer designated premises through Serving Wire Center(s). AT&T said that there is no market demand for the services and its affiliates do not have any current customers for these services.
Numbering Testbed Workshop
The FCC announced that, on March 25, 2014, it Chief Technology Officer will host an all-day workshop to facilitate the design and development of a Numbering Testbed. The numbering Testbed is one of the initiatives adopted by the FCC as part of its Technologies Transition Order. TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers see FCC Bulletin dated February 7, 2014. See TMI’s Blog FCC Authorizes Technology Transition Trials dated January 30, 2014.
The goal of the Numbering Testbed is to convene a community and provide common resources to enable research into numbering in an all-IP network, unencumbered by the constraints of the legacy network and technologies, and ensuring that there is no disruption to them. It will operate under the auspices of the North American Numbering Council (NANC), which will provide a report to the FCC describing the Testbed activities and making recommendations.
The workshop will be an engineering working session that will focus on the basic design and launch of the Testbed as a non-production, prototype system for managing numbering resources and obtaining information about these resources in a post-transitions world. This workshop has three objectives:
(1) to identify gaps in the existing number assignment and management systems that may arise during or after transition to an all-IP environment and opportunities for simplification;
(2) to discuss proposals for a general architecture for the Testbed and the numbering related issues it should address; and
(3) to facilitate administration and organization (mailing list, conference calls) for those individuals who are interested in doing the prototyping and participating further in the Testbed process.
Participation is open to any and all technical experts. The FCC said it particularly welcomes software and network engineers with experience implementing telephony-related systems and contributing to numbering or naming-related standards. Attendees are encouraged to pre-register by submitting their name and affiliation via email to Robert Cannon (Robert.Cannon@fcc.gov) using “Numbering Testbed Workshop” as the subject line in the email. Details about the workshop agenda will be released shortly.
