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
US Senate
South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson introduced legislation addressing rural call completion problems. S.2125, the Public Safety and Economic Security Communications Act, is intended to build upon the FCC’s rural call completion rules. (TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers see FCC Bulletin dated 11/13/13. See TMI’s Blog “FCC Asked to Rethink Rural Call Completion Rules,” dated 2/20/14). It directs the FCC to establish basic quality standards within 180 days of enactment and requires providers that transport voice calls to register with the FCC and comply with those standards. Providers contracting with intermediate providers to route voice calls would be limited to only those providers that have registered with the FCC. In his statement, Senator Johnson said: “This legislation takes immediate action to stop the bad actors that are failing to complete calls to rural areas. The bill includes common sense reforms that will help end the discriminatory delivery of calls by requiring voice providers to register with the FCC and comply with basic service quality standards. The legislation will help ensure that small businesses, families, and emergency responders in every corner of South Dakota and across our country can once again rely upon connection of their incoming telephone calls.” Watch for next updates in the Regulatory Mix.
NTIA
The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community. As the first step, NTIA is asking the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). NTIA told ICANN that the transition proposal must have broad community support and address the following four principles:
- Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
- Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
- Meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and,
- Maintain the openness of the Internet
NTIA’s responsibility includes the procedural role of administering changes to the authoritative root zone file (the database containing the lists of names and addresses of all top-level domains) as well as serving as the historic steward of the DNS. NTIA currently contracts with ICANN to carry out the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions and has a Cooperative Agreement with Verisign under which it performs related root zone management functions. Transitioning NTIA out of its role marks the final phase of the privatization of the DNS as outlined by the U.S. Government in 1997.
TMI’s Spring 2014 Telecom Regulatory Seminar and Workshop – April 24 & 25
Understanding Telecom Regulatory Developments: Best business strategies for compliance