Newsom administration says telecoms deregulation bill offer little protection, particularly in rural California

27 August 2019 by Steve Blum
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Leaning pole

Key opposition to assembly bill 1366 is coming from inside California governor Gavin Newsom’s administration. AB 1366 is the bill that would extend a ban on regulation of “Internet protocol enabled services”, including standard telephone service delivered by voice over Internet protocol technology (VoIP). It’s backed by AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications, Frontier Communications and other telecoms companies, and a long list of non-profit organisations that they pay, but which otherwise have no particular interest in telecoms policy.

The California department of finance registered its formal opposition to AB 1366, which requires sign-off from the governor’s office. The finance department’s objections mirror those made earlier: that the rapid conversion of California’s telephone networks from regulated legacy technology to unregulated VoIP is a backdoor path to complete deregulation of broadband and phone service and infrastructure, and the sham consumer protections added to the bill as window dressing are worthless.

The bill assigns responsibilities of enforcement to the AG without any authority besides litigation and it establishes certain requirements of VoIP service providers without providing any penalty or enforcement mechanisms if they do not comply…

The Legislature and AG do not have any mechanism for resolving those complaints outside of legislation or litigation. The Department of Justice’s resources will likely be taxed given it has to now enforce VoIP service quality requirements and work through all the issues associated with VoIP.

The damage, according to the finance department, will fall disproportionately on rural Californians…

Recent catastrophic wildfires and disasters have demonstrated broader vulnerabilities in the communications grid, highlighted the lack of resiliency, and underscored the need for standards and rules. This bill would continue to prevent the [California Public Utilities Commission] from undertaking investigations or rulemakings that would result in regulations or standards for a large share of the technology used on the communications grid…
Customers who are most at risk of experiencing service abandonment if the [carrier of last resort] requirement is not enforced will be in rural areas where there is no other provider of reliable, affordable telephone service. This represents a significant public safety concern given the increased amount of catastrophic wildfires and disasters in these areas and need to access the communications grid unfailingly.

AB 1366 is in legislative limbo right now. It’s sitting in the California senate’s appropriations committee, which means that legislative leadership will decide on Friday whether it moves forward to a vote by the full senate. Although the millions of dollars that AT&T and the rest of the telecoms industry pays to California senators and assembly members matters a lot, but maybe not as much as the opposition of organised labor and, now, the governor’s office, if not the governor himself.