Telecom Act Update Needed but Unlikely Soon, NARUC Told

The 1996 Telecom Act was a success but needs an update to connect those still unserved, former FCC officials and industry representatives agreed Sunday on a Telecom Staff Subcommittee panel. It’s unlikely to happen this Congress due to political divisions, they said. Former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and Gigi Sohn, former aide to ex-Chairman Tom Wheeler, urged states to stand up. Some state officials responded that pre-emption makes that difficult.

There’s more work to do because about a quarter of people in urban areas and slightly more in rural areas aren’t connected, said Sohn. About half of Americans have two or fewer ISP options, and 20 percent have one choice, said Sohn, a Georgetown Law Institute fellow. The problem isn’t the act but “lack of enforcement” by the FCC and “congressional follow-up,” she said. The act remains “solid law,” but court cases and other events warrant “tweaking,” she said. To make a big impact, the government should treat broadband as an essential infrastructure and invest multiple billions of dollars, she said. “We need to think beyond knocking down the silos.”

Don’t just tweak the act, said NCTA Vice President-State Affairs Rick Cimerman: “Blow it all up. Start over.” House Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden. R-Ore., when chairman in 2014, made plans for an overhaul that remains a good place to start, the cable official said. The divided Congress is unlikely to strike a deal but could support more rural broadband, and resolving net neutrality would be useful, said Wilkinson Barker's Russ Hanser.

Congress should clarify FCC authority over broadband, said Sohn. “I can argue that the current Communications Act authorizes the FCC to oversee the broadband market,” but more than 15 years of battling has been “tiresome,” she said. At minimum, Congress should codify the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality order, she said. “Maybe in a future Congress.”

States shouldn’t wait for Capitol Hill, advised the Benton Foundation's Clyburn. “Deliver your own blueprint for opportunities that will better take into account the state and local needs.” The FCC “abdicated” its role overseeing broadband, including on protecting net neutrality, so states should step up, agreed Sohn.

The ask made longtime Telecom Subcommittee members bristle. The FCC seems to have a “red button” for pre-empting the states that the agency presses when all else fails, said Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Senior Telecom Analyst Labros Pilalis. “You’re asking the states to step forward” but “have used pre-emption so extensively that legally we may not be there to do what you are asking us to do.” Industry has convinced legislatures the FCC is in charge and states don’t need to participate, said Colorado Public Utilities Commission Senior Telecom Analyst Teresa Ferguson. “We want to stand up but we have been gutted.”

“You have to keep at it,” replied Clyburn. “You have no choice.”

5G Impact

Lines of competition are blurring between wireless and other types of internet providers because of 5G, analysts said on a Telecom Committee panel Monday. Verizon is using 5G spectrum for fixed wireless to connect homes with up to 300 Mbps actual speeds, which is faster than cable offers in some places, said Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche. The big advantage of 5G is “low latency,” Fritzsche said. But it’s “only as powerful as the fiber behind it,” so there will be opportunities for wireline partnerships, she said.

Coming 5G services are getting cable’s attention, as evidenced by NCTA pamphlets distributed at the panel for “10G,” the industry’s marketing for 10 Gbps connections, said Raymond James analyst Frank Louthan. “I’m not sure we’d have this if we didn’t have competition coming.” Fixed 5G wireless is a more significant threat to cable than previous wireless generations, he said. Panelists said the blurring lines could convince regulators to OK T-Mobile/Sprint even though it reduces the number of wireless carriers to three (see 1902110004).

Fueling connected cars, smart cities and IoT, 5G will be the “next economic driver” as it rolls out over the next 10 years, said Wells Fargo analyst Davis Hebert. But it’s still the “early innings” of small-cell infrastructure deployment, he said.

Uniform rules for small-cell infrastructure deployment across cities are “extremely” important to spurring deployment, said Fritzsche. Carriers are ready to invest but face municipal red tape, she said. Different rules in 50 states “is one thing,” but different rules in every city is especially burdensome, said Louthan. “I’m not a huge fan of pre-emption and heavy-handedness from Washington, but at some point” one has to find a way to get uniformity to speed deployment, he said. Japan and South Korea have much lower municipal barriers for deployment, noted Hebert.

Government must make it easier for companies to invest, panelists said. Encouraging a competitor to come into a community may spur upgrades by the incumbent, agreed Fritzsche and Louthan, noting that’s what happens when Google Fiber announces it's coming to a city. Government networks aren’t the answer, said Louthan. “Pretty consistently, every municipal broadband network goes bankrupt.”

Telecom Committee Chair Karen Charles Peterson defended muni broadband, saying it’s working in her home state of Massachusetts as part of a mix of approaches to expand service. Peterson, a member of the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, said it’s “hurtful when folks in the financial community are sort of using that language because a number of these towns have to borrow.”

Number Administrator

The switchover from Neustar to Somos as the FCC-contracted North American numbering plan and pooling administrators appears to have gone relatively well, with hopes lack of interruptions and glitches continues, a NARUC session was told Monday. Somos took over Jan. 1.

"We wanted to complete this transition with no impact on resource availability" and "no disruption to the NANPA and PA services," said John Manning, Somos senior director-number administrator. Between October when the FCC awarded the contracts and Jan. 1, "volumes of information" like emails and other documents accumulated over many years were transferred, using Amazon Web Services, Manning said. "That transition hopefully went quietly" so users weren't "impacted," he said.

Somos "found little if any issues" since Jan. 1, Manning told us in Q&A. "There's always an educational aspect" such as updating websites and notifying stakeholders and other companies, he added. "A number of steps were taken prior to the actual transition itself," he said. "Hopefully, from their viewpoint, it would have been fairly transparent to them" that the move occurred, he added: But "the real sign it worked is hopefully that nobody noticed." In the next few months, he hopes, "you’ll hear [little] about the transition and to us that will be major success." To help keep things smooth, Somos hired some 27 Neustar employees, Manning told us.

The previous FCC change from Neustar to iconectiv as local number portability administrator was separate (see July 25, 2016, order). Nonetheless, iconectiv and Somos "work together, obviously, because our systems" are "coordinated," responded Somos Vice President-Industry Relations and Public Policy Mary Retka to our query.

The commission declined to comment on Somos' transitions.

NARUC Notebook

It could be nearly three years before the FCC distributes broadband money from a Connect America Fund Phase III auction, telecom consultant Carol Mattey said Saturday on a subcommittee panel. Even if the FCC decided March 1 to move ahead on the auction, it would take at least until December 2020 before winners get any money, she said. More realistically, it wouldn’t be until December 2021, she said. Combining the $1.5 billion Phase III with the $100 million remote areas fund into one auction could save staff energy, she said. Mattey urged the FCC to be “more future forward” when setting auction rules than it was initially with the CAF. The former FCC official regrets the agency’s “limited ambition” in 2011 when it set a goal of 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload for CAF. It was later upped to 10/1 Mbps but remained below the agency’s 25/3 Mbps broadband definition, she said. Phase III funding should be available for all places that don’t have 25/3, she said.

NARUC nominated two state commissioners to the Federal-State Joint Board on Separations to fill vacancies left by former Montana Commissioner Travis Kavulla and former Colorado Commissioner Wendy Moser. NARUC nominated Minnesota Commissioner Dan Lipschultz and Colorado Commissioner John Gavan, said a letter posted Monday in FCC docket 80-286. The Separations group and the Joint Board on Universal Service were both expected to meet Monday evening during the NARUC conference in Washington (see 1902080045). The FCC recently added Commissioner Geoffrey Starks to both joint boards.