With another Pacific Gas and Electric company power shut off looming later today, the California Public Utilities Commission is calling in telecommunications companies and demanding that they be prepared to explain their “responsiveness during the latest wildfires and public safety power shut offs to keep telecommunications services on”.
A hearing is scheduled for this morning in San Francisco, with “top officials” from California’s major telecoms companies directed to “publicly appear and publicly address their response during the latest wildfire events [and] public safety power shutoffs”. The list includes California’s two big telephone companies – AT&T and Frontier Communications – as well as Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox on the cable side, and all four mobile carriers – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. Electric utility executives are also invited, albeit a bit more politely.
During the last wave of power cuts, intended to prevent wildfires, hundreds of thousands of Californians lost telephone and broadband service. Data collected by the Federal Communications Commission indicated that 455,000 telco and cable subscribers in 32 California counties lost connectivity, and 3.3% of cell sites were down. There might have been more – the FCC didn’t say how many telecoms companies were reporting outages – reporting was voluntary – or whether the total included all customers who couldn’t connect because they lacked back up power in their homes and businesses.
Who shows up will be as significant as what they say. Expect AT&T and Frontier to send people – they’re still regulated to an extent by the CPUC – but whether their representatives are actual decision makers or lobbyists with inflated titles remains to be seen.
Cable companies tend to resist any encroachment on their turf by the CPUC, so their response, if any, will be interesting to watch. Normally, mobile carriers don’t have much to say to state officials, but since AT&T has to be there anyway, and Sprint and T-Mobile are trying to make nice with the CPUC so they can gain approval for their merger, we might get some meaningful information from them.