The Regulatory Mix – Monday, March 17, 2014

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

Workshop

On April 17 and 18, 2014, the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau will hold a 1½ day workshop on “Public Safety Imperatives for All-IP Networks.” The workshop will seek to identify the conditions, rebuttable presumptions, and relevant factors that are needed to ensure that core public safety values are supported in the transition to an all IP-based infrastructure. The workshop will be free and open to the public. Individuals interested in attending in person must pre-register at: http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/event-registration.html by April 11, 2014. The workshop may also be viewed live at www.fcc.gov/live. Event-related questions may be emailed to livequestions@fcc.gov.

 

The workshop include representatives from the public safety community, service providers, technology vendors, and other stakeholders. The four sessions will focus on current public safety, emergency response and national security dependencies on legacy switched telecommunications infrastructure and challenges in four categories:

(1) day-today public safety operations in an all-IP world;

(2) disaster preparation and responses in an all-IP world;

(3) additional risk factors from cyber exploits on commercial, public and government networks; and

(4) the impact of technology transitions on national security and federal government systems.

 

911 Reliability Petition

The FCC announced the comment dates on a Motion for Clarification or, in the Alternative, Petition for Partial Reconsideration of its Order requiring certain 911 communications providers to take reasonable measures to provide reliable 911 service, as evidenced by an annual certification of compliance with specified best practices or reasonable alternative measures. Oppositions to the Petition are due March 27, 2014; replies are due April 7, 2014.5

 

The Motion was filed by Intrado, Inc. It seeks clarification or reconsideration of the Order’s requirements regarding diversity audits of critical 911 circuits and network monitoring links. Specifically, Intrado requests that the FCC “confirm that Section 12.4 (b) of the agency’s rules permits Covered 911 Service Providers to take reasonable alternative measures with respect to auditing, tagging, and eliminating single points of failure with respect to Critical 911 Circuits and auditing network Monitoring Links.” In the alternative, Intrado asks the FCC to reconsider its Order and amend its rules to provide the requested flexibility. See the Regulatory Mix dated February 19, 2013. TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers see FCC Bulletin dated January 2, 2014, and February 11, 2014.

 

CAF Support

The FCC authorized $16,713,875 in additional Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase I second round incremental support in response to the modified elections of AT&T and Windstream Communications. Specifically: (1) AT&T was authorized to receive $5,248,300 in additional support in exchange for its commitment to deploy broadband-capable infrastructure to 6,772 additional locations; and (2) Windstream was authorized to receive $11,465,575 in additional support in exchange for its commitment to deploy to an additional 13,273 locations.

 

Connect America Phase I Round Two Additional Authorized Amounts

 

 

 

TMI’s Spring 2014 Telecom Regulatory Seminar and Workshop April 24 & 25.