Nevada Should Address Updated FCC Outage Rules, Say PUC Staff, Cox
Nevada Public Utilities Commission staff recommended a rulemaking on proposed changes to Nevada Administrative Code (NAC) severe outage reporting rules. CenturyLink, AT&T, Frontier Communications and the Nevada Telecommunications Association last month asked the PUC to align state rules with FCC…
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rules taking effect Feb. 1 that will use OC3 minutes instead of DS3 minutes for reporting thresholds. A DS3 copper circuit has 45 Mbps data speeds while an OC3 fiber circuit is 155 Mbps. The wireline carriers asked for waiver if the PUC can’t align the rules by Feb. 1. PSC staff doesn’t object to a rulemaking. The state commission should address the FCC order “to avoid inconsistencies in the NAC,” Nevada PUC staff commented Wednesday in docket 17-12006. It should grant the waiver because “it would be burdensome, inefficient, and potentially costly, for providers to comply with two sets of regulatory guidelines related to reporting outages,” staff said. Cox supported aligning Nevada and FCC rules, saying the state commission should be consistent with another NAC rule requiring wireline carriers to report outages that affect 300,000 user minutes in cities with population of at least 20,000. The FCC threshold is 900,000 minutes, the cable company said.