2020 might be the year that the State of California figures out what, if any, role it will play in regulating (or not) broadband service and infrastructure. As of tomorrow, the California Public Utilities Commission is no longer barred from regulating services like VoIP (voice over Internet protocol). A 2012 state law that said the CPUC couldn’t do that expired at the end of 2019.
But that doesn’t mean that anything is decided.
AT&T and its fellow monopoly model Internet service providers tried to get an extension of that ban approved in the California legislature this year. Assembly bill 1366 made it through the gauntlet of committee hearings to pass in the assembly and nearly reach a floor vote in the senate. It was finally stalled by opposition from the Communications Workers of America – organised labor contributes even more money and other kinds of support to California politicians than cable and telephone companies.
Stalled, but not stopped completely. AB 1366 can be resurrected next month, or a new bill can be written that would accomplish the same thing. Or maybe come at it from a different direction.
AB 1366 didn’t address broadband service as such. It’s about “Internet protocol enabled” services – anything that rides on top of broadband service – although regulations for a top level service could have implications for the underlying broadband service too. It would have extended an existing ban on IP-enabled service regulations by any state agency or local government. That could mean anything from Facebook to email to Netflix to Google search, which arguably shouldn’t be regulated at the state level. It also means VoIP, which is voice telephone service that runs on top of unregulated broadband service rather than via the old dial up, regulated phone network, AKA “plain old telephone service” (POTS).
A 2019 federal appeals court ruling allowed state-level regulations, although to what extent is still an open question. California already has Internet regulations on the books – a 2018 bill imposed network neutrality rules on ISPs. Enforcement, which is in the hands of the California attorney general, is stalled until federal court challenges are resolved. But the door is now open. Whether, and how, California lawmakers walk through it is top of the broadband policy watch list for the new year.