Today:  NTCA Report on Availability of Broadband Internet Service, FCC Workshop on 911 Outages, California Hearing on Text Messaging 

NTCA Survey Reports Availability of Broadband Internet Service

NTCA -The Rural Broadband Association released its annual survey of broadband availability and found that 67% of respondents’ customers can receive a maximum downstream speed of greater than 25 Mbps and 20% can receive between 10 Mbps and 25 Mbps.  41% of survey respondents’ customers taking broadband subscribe to service greater than or equal to 10 Mbps downstream.  52% of survey respondents currently deploying fiber serve at least 50% of their customers using fiber to the home (FTTH) while 24% serve 20% of their customers or less via such technology.  82% of respondents indicated they had a long-term fiber deployment strategy and 31% said they had completed fiber deployments to all customers.  However, 89% of survey respondents cited the cost to deploy fiber infrastructure as the No. 1 barrier to its widespread availability.  Survey respondents also indicated they face some type of competition for broadband in limited portions of their serving areas from national ISPs, cable companies, and fixed and/or mobile wireless internet service providers.  33% said they currently offer VoIP service and 47% of those not currently offering VoIP said they have plans to do so in the foreseeable future.  70% of respondents offer video service to their customers.

FCC Workshop On Improving Situational Awareness During 911 Outages

The FCC released the agenda for its September 11, 2017, workshop to discuss best practices for improving situational awareness during 911 outages.  Two roundtables will be held, “Identifying best practices for communicating 911 service outage information among 911 service providers, originating service providers, and PSAPs” and “Identifying best practices for communicating 911 outage information to the public.”  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will make opening remarks, and the roundtable panels will be moderated by FCC staff members.  Panel participants include industry members, state emergency service directors, and industry groups.  Audio/video coverage of the meeting will be broadcast live at www.fcc.gov/live.  Audience members participating via webcast may email event-related questions to livequestions@fcc.gov.

California Sets Hearing On Text Messaging Issues

The PUC will hold a prehearing on September 13, 2017, to discuss the positions of the parties, scope and schedule, and other procedural matters in the proceeding opened to consider whether to adopt a regulation exempting text messaging services from the PUC’s Public Purpose Program surcharge.  The PUC may adopt such a regulation if it concludes that text messaging services are “information services” rather than “telecommunications services” as such terms are defined in the Communications Act of 1934, as amended. 

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The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Briefing.