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’s telecommunications policy goals are to promote public safety, consumer protection, universal service, competition, and network reliability. At its meeting today, the PUC will consider a Report on Telecommunications Guiding Principles intended to provide a basis for discussions between it and other relevant stakeholders for the creation of a Telecommunications Action Plan. Such an Action Plan will assist the PUC in meeting its statutorily defined responsibilities to ensure that all Californians to have access to safe, reliable telecommunications services at reasonable prices. Among other things, staff would be directed to create a comprehensive Action Plan detailing the steps necessary to create a path for achieving goals based on the guiding principles established in this document.
District of Columbia
The PSC will hold public hearings on November 5, 2014, in the PSC’s Hearing Room and November 10, 2014, at the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library to receive comments in the proceeding opened to investigate Verizon’s use of its copper infrastructure to provide telecommunications services and whether, and under what circumstances, the Verizon plans to transition customers from the telecommunications services provided over copper facilities to telecommunications services provided over fiber facilities.
FCC
The FCC announced it will hold a forum November 7, 2014, to promote the latest advances in accessible wireless emergency communications, including text-to-911. The event will engage technology designers, engineers and policy makers to raise awareness of the needs of people with disabilities prior to developing devices and services that can be used in and during emergencies, with the goal of saving more lives and enabling quicker responses to natural and manmade disasters. The event will be free and open to the public. Live, captioned video of the event will be available at www.fcc.gov/live. During the morning session, government and disability technology experts will share the latest research and development activities for accessible emergency communications, alerts and notifications. The afternoon session will include an FCC presentation on the status of its text-to-911 rules, followed by a report from wireless carriers and public safety officials on their progress in rules implementation.
