Industry Experts Urge Greater Collaboration on Copper Transition
Broadband officials and experts emphasized the need for greater communication and partnerships between industry and government to complete the transition from copper infrastructure to fiber and other technologies during NARUC's Winter Policy Summit on Tuesday. Some stressed the need for greater oversight of the transition and carrier of last resort (COLR) obligations. Others discussed the potential effects of the challenge to the FCC's Title II broadband reclassification and the U.S. Supreme Court's decision for a second time to deny rehearing a challenge to New York's broadband affordability law.
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"We need to make sure we do this in an orderly fashion" instead of "fighting the inevitable," said Lynn Follansbee, USTelecom's vice president-strategic initiatives and partnerships. COLR obligations were placed on legacy telephone companies "at a time when it was basically a pact made between the government and the companies," she added.
The transition away from copper infrastructure is a complex but necessary issue, said AT&T Vice President-Federal Regulatory Caroline Van Wie. "We've got to work closely with our partners in government." Added Follansbee: "In a competitive environment, this regulation doesn't make any sense anymore," which is why policymakers stopped rate-of-return regulations and moved toward competitive markets.
The transition is a "two-level process," said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. It involves the FCC but "does not replace the states on this," he said. Follansbee noted that COLR obligations "are only on companies who are providing legacy services, so these things are very much related."
BEAD is also "not a replacement for COLR" obligations, Feld argued. There's a "huge difference between what the FCC does and what the states do." State and local officials "have to step in and step up" where the FCC can't.
It's "great that there [are] voluntary reporting requirements," said Leo Fitzpatrick, a policy analyst at The Utility Reform Network (TURN), but "maybe the question should be at the state level" whether every technological transition should have some regulatory oversight. Reports, transparency and assurance are critical, Feld added, so that while the transition is happening, people still get the services they need.
Another panel covered the significance of several legal challenges. Michael Santorelli, director of New York Law School's Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute, mentioned New York's Affordable Broadband Act, which the Supreme Court denied a petition for rehearing Monday. It's a positive example of a state stepping up to address broadband affordability and access issues in the absence of federal action, Santorelli said.
"The ruling doesn't change very much," NCTA Deputy Chief Legal Counsel Russ Hanser said, noting that broadband was already being treated as an information service. ISPs are "continuing to operate under the same legal framework under which they've operated for most of the past 20 to 25 years," he said.
States have the opportunity to "take back the power you might have lost at the beginning of the century because you were told ... that the feds would take care of it," said Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Senior Fellow Gigi Sohn. "And the feds aren't taking care of it."