PSTN-to-IP transition

Following 2012's Hurricane Sandy, Verizon has put together a new set of flood barrier and network transformation methods that are designed to achieve two goals: keep its wireline network operational and hasten its ongoing copper-to-fiber migration. During Sandy, which flooded several of its service and central offices, the service provider reported $1 billion in damage due to water and related storm damage.

Public Knowledge joined Communications Workers of America and 20 rural, consumer, civil rights, labor, and other groups in a letter urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to retain the agency’s tech transitions rules that protect consumers while providers like Verizon transition from copper to fiber networks. The agency plans to roll back these consumer protections on November 16, effectively downgrading rural America.

The Federal Communications Commission is intervening in a court case in order to help Charter Communications avoid utility-style consumer protections related to its phone service in Minnesota. The FCC and Charter both want to avoid a precedent that could lead other states to impose stricter consumer protection rules on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service offered by cable companies. The FCC has never definitively settled the regulatory status of VoIP.

President Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has rubberstamped the elimination of several policies and protections that are critical to closing the digital divide. Among these now-battered policies is an item that will be decided on in November and will give telecom giants a green light to abandon their rural customers.

CenturyLink is joining the chorus of incumbent telecommunication companies that want the copper retirement and legacy service discontinuance process to be simplified to facilitate the build out and expansion of next-gen fiber and IP-based services.

In an Federal Communications Commission filing, CenturyLink has asked the regulator to streamline the Section 214 and copper retirement processes. “CenturyLink expressed wholehearted support for the Commission’s proposals to expedite and streamline the Section 214 and copper retirement processes,” Century wrote. “The migration to next-generation facilities and services is both natural and desirable. The Commission therefore should eliminate prior approval requirements where possible and streamline those that remain.”

Verizon has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to retire copper in eight Northeast markets (Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland and Delaware), marking another step in the company’s migration of its customer base to fiber-based technology. Verizon said if these are approved the switchover will take effect on or after February 28, 2018.

As Texas starts to dry out from the damage of Hurricane Harvey, another perfect storm is forming. In a strange twist of timing, Big Telecom may walk away from the storm with an unfair advantage that could hurt smaller, local providers in Houston—and drive up costs for consumers in the process.

Across the country, Big Telecom has gradually been retiring old copper lines—used to delivery home phone as well as broadband—and replacing them with modern infrastructure, like fiber optic cables. When a natural disaster like Harvey wipes out the old wires, it's a good excuse for the provider to do a widespread upgrade. But because the Federla Communications Commission is currently rolling back regulations that require large ISPs—usually called the incumbent provider—to give access to infrastructure to small ISPs, these upgrades could leave smaller providers in the lurch.

In April 2017, the Federal Communications Commission began a wireline infrastructure proceeding designed to accelerate broadband deployment. The proceeding contains multiple proposals to remove barriers to broadband deployment and infrastructure, such as reforming pole attachment rates and preempting state and local laws. Buried within these proposals is a plan to eliminate “tech transitions” rules, which outline the responsibilities of phone carriers when they choose to retire copper networks or discontinue service. The FCC is seeking to eliminate these rules by shortening the notice period for copper retirement and removing the requirement that carriers must consider what impact their network changes will have on other technologies. In other words, the FCC is now acting to enable carriers to quickly abandon copper services without considering the consequences for communities. But what is worse, rather repeal these rules directly, the FCC has decided to hide its intent behind a “technical” change in definition.

As we’ve seen from all of the groups that filed comments with the FCC, eliminating common-sense notification rules would impact consumers, small businesses, and competitive carriers, particularly the nation’s most vulnerable communities.

[Commentary] Once the floodwaters recede and the reconstruction begins, when can residents see their phone service — and broadband service — return. For rural residents of Texas still dependent on traditional landlines, the answer to that may be “never.”

Why never? Back in 2011, Texas deregulated its telephone system. Of particular relevance here, Texas made it ridiculously easy for phone companies to get rid of their “carrier of last resort” (COLR) obligations — the obligation for the incumbent telephone network to provide service to everyone its service territory. As a result, phone companies in Texas do not have a state-based legal obligation to repair or replace service once it goes down. So in places where the telephone network has been damaged or destroyed by Harvey, AT&T (the primary legacy phone company in the impacted area) has no state responsibility to restore service.

[Harold Feld is Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge]

AT&T and Verizon, two of the nation’s largest telecommunication companies, are making their case again to the Federal Communications Commission to shorten the copper retirement notice from 180 to 90 days. The longer 180-day period was developed under former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in the regulator’s 2015 Technology Transitions Order.

As part of that order, the FCC proposed giving competitive carriers and businesses a six-month notice, while residential customers get three months’ notice before copper facilities are shut down. Under that order, AT&T, Verizon and other ILECs are required to provide notice to CLEC wholesale customers that use copper facilities to deliver voice and Ethernet over Copper (EoC) services to business customers. ILECs would also be given the option to retire copper networks and replace them with fiber without prior commission approval, but only if no service is discontinued, reduced, or impaired.