NARUC Eager for FCC Broadband Maps 'Version 1.0'

NEW ORLEANS -- State regulators’ telecom priority in the year ahead will be “trying to deploy where broadband isn’t,” said new NARUC President Michael Caron in an interview at the association’s conference here. Caron hopes new FCC broadband maps coming Friday will be more accurate and include more people who lack service, he said. On a Monday panel about the maps, state commissioners asked an FCC official if the agency is up to the task and what states can do to help.

“There’s a lot of money sloshing around … and NARUC hopes to be part of helping all the states coordinate with the federal government to make sure that we get the deployment we need,” said Caron, a Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority commissioner: It’s important to know where there isn’t coverage “before you can cover it, and the old maps just weren’t able to do that.”

States will have an outreach role encouraging challenges to inaccuracies in the map, said NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman Tremaine Phillips in an interview Tuesday. The Michigan Public Service Commission member compared it to what states have done to educate people about the affordable connectivity program. Residents must ensure “these maps are properly reflecting the availability of service throughout the state,” he said.

It looks like a “tremendous challenge” for the FCC to be responsive to map challenges, Phillips commented Monday after Ed Bartholme, FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau associate chief, presented a lengthy walkthrough of the process to NARUC attendees. “It seems like this could be a very manual process in terms of checking and verifying either single points or aggregated data sets,” said Phillips.

It’s a “massive pivot” shifting to addresses from census blocks in determining broadband availability, agreed Bartholme. The soon-to-be-released data hasn’t been through any challenges, he noted: The FCC expects an iterative process to improve the data, which will never be perfect. "We understand that it's a big undertaking,” Bartholme said: “We're building the resources and the tools to make sure that we can move on this quickly when those [challenges] start to come in.”

Telecom Committee ex-Chair Karen Charles Peterson asked how the FCC will verify challengers are authentic. The FCC will require challengers to make a certification, which the agency hopes will “cut down on gaming,” Bartholme told the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable commissioner. Other mechanisms within the system can flag possible problems, like if someone is “carpet bombing the map” with many challenges, he added.

“You just have to have the expectation that this is going to be an iterative process,” and what’s released Friday is “map version 1.0,” Phillips told us. “Yes, this is the FCC taking the first crack at this,” but “it’s everyone’s responsibility to then get that 1.0 version to 2.0.” ISPs will have to “staff up” to respond to challenges, and the FCC may have to deal with “nefarious actors trying to pollute … that data set.”

The FCC wants “on-the-ground knowledge,” including from utility regulators, to get the best maps, Bartholme told NARUC. States can help drive public engagement, he said: "Help us get the word out to folks about why this matters."

State Oversight

NARUC’s Telecom Committee held off voting at the New Orleans conference on a proposed resolution to clarify states’ broadband oversight role (see 2211140046). Michigan is “open to a discussion on what that specific role might be,” Phillips told us: The state wants to ensure federally funded providers follow through on commitments. With the infrastructure cash going through broadband offices in many states, the Michigan PSC is also trying to strengthen its relationship with the state’s High-Speed Internet Office, he said.

The Michigan PSC is seeing an “influx” of broadband complaints about service quality, availability and other issues, Phillips said. It has had “some ability to provide recourse,” such as when the provider also sells cable TV, but as federal funding brings many different types of broadband providers to the state, “we are just going to need a different process and mechanism … to be able to process and better address complaints.” Rural Michiganders would rather do that through the state than the FCC, he added.

Keeping telecom networks up during disasters is a “vexing” issue for state commissioners, said Caron, noting many facilities last only 48 hours on backup power if the electric grid goes down, said Caron. “I’m not sure how you really solve it because of the cost” and how often storms hit, but “we need to try to find a reasonable way to make sure that people can communicate when … they’re in the direst of straits.”

With extreme weather events accelerating in frequency, Phillips wants better relationships between energy and telecom providers, he said: Problems can occur when they fail to communicate or share data. “It’s about breaking down the silos” between energy and telecom industries -- and between NARUC’s telecom and energy committees, he said.

The National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA) passed a resolution at a collocated conference Monday to urge the FCC and states to prioritize promoting broadband adoption and digital equity, inclusion and literacy efforts. Tennessee’s NASUCA member abstained. The FCC and other agencies should “move aggressively to address and remedy digital discrimination by any participant in the broadband ecosystem” and “to ensure that consumers reap immediate and longterm benefits” from parts of federal law promoting adoption, the resolution said.