States Don’t Foresee FCC Preemption on BPL, Says Chappelle
State regulators don’t see a VoIP-like FCC preemption of broadband over power lines (BPL), said Mich. PSC Comr. Laura Chappelle, who heads the NARUC BPL task force. “I don’t see the FCC or FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] as overly anxious to jump and try to preempt BPL,” she told us. The task force is in the final stages of its BPL inquiry and expects to present a white paper to NARUC by Feb., she added.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Chappelle said unlike BPL, a lot of the Commission’s concern with VoIP had to do with Universal Service Fund (USF) implications, 911 and other traditional telephone tag issues. “In that case, the FCC was clearly saying we can sort this out at the national level, which is fine.” It’s possible for the FCC to act similarly with BPL, she said. But, she said, it would be highly unusual for the FCC to take over state electric distribution access and pole attachment issues. “I just can’t see that. I think it an open question for them.” She said the FCC was looking at those issues, and “they are welcome to.”
On the issue of open access, which regulators probed deeply at a meeting with industry representatives last month (CD Oct 26 p1), Chappelle said the general feeling was it was premature now. However, regulators weren’t ruling out consideration of the issue because they wanted to make sure that “we are not putting something in place that might translate into another type of monopoly service that has a potential for having market abuses.” At the meeting, Tex. PUC Comr. Julie Parsely had told industry that regulators would treat utilities unlike other services because they were assured a rate of return.
Parsely’s point, Chappelle said, was that BPL used utility lines, which were “legacy infrastructure.” That was the reason why state regulators still had to be concerned about contractual arrangements, affiliate transactions, pole attachment and access issues, Chappelle said. However, BPL providers had made clear that they were far away from requesting mandated open access, she said, because “you don’t have 2 BPL providers arguing over the same pole.”