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 Congress
The House of Representatives approved H.R. 805, the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act See the Regulatory Mix dated 6/18/15, 6/16/15,and 6/11/15. The bill would prohibit the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) from relinquishing responsibility over the Internet domain name system until 30 legislative days after NTIA submits a report to Congress. The report must contain a transition plan as well as a certification from the Assistant Secretary of NTIA attesting to the steps taken to ensure that the transition protects a free and open Internet.
FCC
Text-to-911 Registry
The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau announced the latest update to its Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) Text-to-911 Readiness and Certification Registry. The Registry lists PSAPs that are ready to receive text-to-911 messages. It also provides notice to CMRS and other providers of interconnected text messaging services of the date of PSAP readiness. Covered providers must begin routing 911 text messages to requesting PSAPs within six months of the notice date. The updated Text-to-911 Registry reflects information reported to the Bureau since the Bureau’s May 27, 2015, update as well as clarifications to previously submitted information. The Registry is available here.
CAF
The FCC released a list of census blocks in price cap service areas that are deemed “extremely high-cost.” While these census blocks are not eligible for the offer of Connect America Phase II model-based support to price cap carriers, price cap carriers accepting model-based support may substitute locations in these blocks in lieu of those in census blocks subject to the offer of support to meet their deployment obligations in a state. The list of blocks includes the number of locations in the block, the state where the offer of support is made, and the price cap carrier. The list of extremely high-cost census blocks is available at https://transition.fcc.gov/wcb/CAM43_EHCT_CBs.zip. A list of census blocks eligible for the offer of model-based support is available at http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/CAM43_Supported_Locations.zip.