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
477 Filings
The FCC announced that its 477 filing interface remains closed and that it was taking advantage of the suspension to deploy “newly developed technical improvements to the interface that should significantly enhance its overall performance. In particular, we expect improvements in the stability and processing times of large file uploads…”. The FCC said it would update filers on the status of the site “in approximately two weeks.” Once the site reopens, the FCC will announce the new filing deadline, which will be no less than two weeks after that date. Filers can continue to prepare their data for upload while the site is down. To assist filers, the FCC also made several new resources available on its Form 477 webpage, http://www.fcc.gov/form477.
Rural Broadband Experiments
The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau released information regarding usage allowance and pricing to assist applicants seeking category one* funding for rural broadband experiments. The data is a list of the responses from the urban rate survey for service offerings in urban areas meeting a minimum speed of 25 Mbps /5 Mbps or faster.
*Category one funding is for networks capable of delivering 100 Mbps downstream/25 Mbps upstream that also offer at least one service plan that provides 25 Mbps downstream/5 Mbps upstream to all locations within the selected census blocks. Category one funding recipients must provide usage and pricing that is reasonably comparable to usage and pricing for comparable wireline offerings in urban areas.
New York
The PSC is calling for additional comments by November 7, 2014 on the options for area code relief in the 631 area code region (Suffolk County). The 631 area code is anticipated to run out of assignable telephone numbers by the first quarter of 2016. The PSC sought comment on this issue in July 2014, and held forums and public statement hearings. TMI Regulatory Bulletin Service subscribers see Bulletin dated 7/10/14. Comments were filed by AT&T, Cablevision, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, and by seventeen individuals. Twelve individuals appeared at the public hearings. Since the area code relief being considered will affect the habits and practices of several hundred thousand customers, Staff recommended that the PSC hold one additional comment period. Thereafter, Staff will consider the additional input received, re-evaluate its recommendation for an overlay, and bring the matter to the PSC for final decision.
