On Thursday in San Francisco, AT&T defended itself against charges that it’s in contempt of California Public Utilities Commission orders and that it broke CPUC rules and state law. AT&T is admitting that California law no longer bars the CPUC from regulating Internet protocol enabled service such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), but doesn’t appear to be giving up the fight. Instead, it’s falling back to a second line of defence that was thoughtfully provided by the Federal Communications Commission.
The dispute centers on next generation 911 service, but it’s also the first test of the CPUC’s ability to regulate services that ride on Internet technology since the expiration of a state law that previously blocked such regulation. I sat in on the AT&T contempt hearing for a few minutes – would’ve spent more time, but that wasn’t the way my day went. It was just a brief taste, but the flavor was consistent with AT&T’s written response. Which was mostly dry arguments about who provides each piece of the increasingly complex communications path between the public and 911 answering centers, and how that maps to the equally complex web of California’s regulatory obligations and AT&T’s deliberately byzantine corporate structure. Links to AT&T’s filing and the hundreds of pages of exhibits are below.
Previously, AT&T’s defence rested, in large part, on the California legislature’s 2012 decision to bar the CPUC from regulating VoIP and similar, Internet-delivered services. No longer. Its latest response mentions that now-expired law only in passing, and in the past tense.
But AT&T prepared a fallback position. In an attachment, AT&T tries to define next generation 911 service as an “information service”, as opposed to 911 service based on legacy technology , which it admits is a “telecommunications service”. This nonsense is the result of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2017 decision to repeal network neutrality rules and declare, in Alice in Wonderland fashion, that transporting data from point A to point B via the Internet isn’t telecommunications.
AT&T jumped down that same rabbit hole by claiming, in effect, that phone calls that ride on that one, particular kind of digital transportation aren’t phone calls. Unfortunately, AT&T isn’t trying to make its case to the Queen of Hearts.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
AT&T’s Response to Administrative Law Judge’s Ruling Regarding Order to Show Cause, 6 January 2020
Exhibit 1
Exhibits 2 through 8
Exhibits 9 through 15
Exhibit 16