CPUC Member Urges Longer Wireless Battery Backup Before Next Wildfires

“Four hours is not enough” for battery backup at wireless cellsites, since last year’s public safety power shutoffs lasted two to eight days, California Public Utilities Commission member Genevieve Shiroma said Wednesday. CPUC is looking into the issue, she replied to our question on a resiliency panel at the NARUC winter meeting. For the state commission, “the wildfire emergency has really put an exclamation point on the importance of communications and broadband during an emergency,” said former FCC and CPUC Commissioner Rachelle Chong in an interview.

Also Wednesday, NARUC finalized a resolution seeking accurate maps and an unserved focus for the FCC’s forthcoming 5G fund that’s replacing Mobility Fund Phase II. The state commissioners association will look closely this year at ways to spur broadband including through rural electric cooperatives, President Brandon Presley said in a Tuesday interview.

“We know the fires will be coming again,” and the CPUC expects more power shutoffs this fall, Shiroma said. CPUC President Marybel Batjer is leading an open proceeding on the wireless backup issue, she said.

Communications companies “rely heavily” on electricity providers, Shiroma said. The commission is looking at available technologies and asking “what can we do in a cost-effective way for providing that greater resiliency, because we have tasked ourselves at the commission to not allow what happened last fall” to repeat, she said. The commissioner said she doesn’t have the answer.

“People were plunged into darkness” for two to eight days and wireless companies “had a lot of challenges,” Chong told us: “Their cellsites ran out of juice.” Current CPUC rules allow four to eight hours for backup power, but it’s now obvious that requirement is inadequate, she said. Chong hopes the commission will increase the standard and address other mitigation issues before the next wildfire season this summer, she said. The FCC, meanwhile, should write “policies and guidelines” on wireless power issues, since wireless is mainly regulated at the federal level, she said.

Utilities should take advantage of an expected FCC order to approve converting 900 MHz spectrum from voice-only service used by railroads to a wireless broadband service reserved primarily for critical infrastructure, said Chong, who works with smart-grid consultant E. Stipnieks Strategies. Private wireless networks can enhance resiliency in wildfires through connected sensors that can smell smoke, report when an electric line is falling and check wind, temperature and humidity, she said.

RDOF

Everyone including the FCC agrees broadband mapping “has been a mess,” Presley said about the 5G resolution, which unanimously cleared NARUC’s Telecom Committee Tuesday (see 2002110021). “We need to get it right.”

Presley's glad FCC members discussed concerns about letter-of-credit requirements in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund at their last meeting. NARUC hasn’t taken a position on the state funding concerns, he said. Presley wouldn’t support anything to reduce funding to his state Mississippi, which he said already doesn’t get enough federal money, but he said it’s the FCC’s issue to resolve.

Mapping is a “big mess,” with federal maps overstating coverage, said Chong. “We’ve sort of given up on quick FCC actions, so California is doing it ourselves, as per normal.”

Chong praised the RDOF order for requiring 25/3 Mbps but wanted it to include anchor institutions as locations in addition to residences and small businesses. She found “curious” language saying Phase I auctions won't be open to census block groups that received state subsidies for that speed. California funds unserved and underserved areas through the Advanced Services Fund, she noted. That fund requires only 10/1 Mbps, though some providers apply for higher speeds, she said. “It might disqualify some of them but not all of them.” Chong said she was reassured by an FCC staffer speaking on the requirement at NARUC earlier this week (see 2002100023).

Driving Broadband

NARUC launched a broadband task force Friday.

The 12-commissioner group led by South Dakota’s Chris Nelson (R) and Nebraska’s Crystal Rhoades (D) held an organizing meeting Sunday. “I’ve asked this task force to really dig into these issues deep,” said Presley, who's also a member (see 2002100040). It will look closely at RDOF and report on broadband success stories, he said. Nelson and Rhoades are “shoulder-to-the-wheel type commissioners” who will work hard, said the Mississippi Public Service Commission chair.

Unlike previous NARUC task forces, the broadband group has a two-year charter that will carry into the next association president’s term, Presley said. The group probably will release interim reports, and meet telephonically between now and the next NARUC meeting in Boston in July, he said.

Presley agreed with the optimism about telecom bipartisanship expressed Monday at NARUC by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker. The senator is a Republican from the same Mississippi county as the Democratic commissioner. Deploying broadband brings together the political parties, said Presley.

The NARUC president praised Wicker's highlighting electric cooperatives deploying broadband, made possible in Mississippi by a 2019 state law (see 1901300026). Eight co-ops have started selling broadband in Presley’s district in the past year, he said.

“If you don’t have broadband, you ain’t getting economic development,” said National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson on a Wednesday panel. Even state commissions without a regulatory relationship with electric co-ops should talk to them about what state laws and regulations inhibit their ability to deploy broadband, Matheson said. Cost is the biggest challenge, he said. Antiquated easement rules frequently restrict selling retail broadband even if they allow co-ops to string up fiber, the NRECA president added.

Power company Arizona Public Service doesn’t sell broadband, “but we do operate transmission lines that go into rural communities, and we have fiber on those lines,” said CEO Jeff Guldner. “We will be able to lease that to telecommunications providers.” He said that “whatever we make on that lease actually comes back to lower the rates that we then have to charge customers because we’re able to offset that with the revenue credit.”