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.
NTIA Broadband USA Webinar Series
The National Telecommunications & Information Agency announced that as part of its BroadbandUSA program it will host a series of webinars on a monthly basis to engage the public and stakeholders with information to accelerate broadband access, improve digital inclusion, strengthen policies, and support local community priorities. The webinar series will provide ongoing source information on the range of topics and issues being addressed by BroadbandUSA, including best practices for improving broadband deployment, digital literacy, and e-government. BroadbandUSA will hold the webinars from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the third Wednesday of every month, beginning February 15, 2017, and continuing through September 20, 2017.
FCC Inflation Adjustments for Cable Operators
The FCC announced the most recent inflation adjustment factors for cable operators. For operators filing quarterly using FCC Form 1240, the third quarter 2016 inflation factor is 1.42%. Operators calculating the Inflation Factor for a True-Up Period which includes some portion of the Third Quarter of 2016 should enter the inflation factor on the appropriate lines of Worksheet 1 of FCC Form 1240 as “0.0142”. Operators using this factor for calculating the Projected Period Inflation Segment of FCC Form 1240 should enter this number on Line C3 (January 1996 version), or Line C5 (July 1996 version) as “1.0142.”
California Decision on Call Completion
The California Public Service Commission issued a Decision directing, among other things, that communication companies file reports on the practice of attaching facilities to trees; call completion problems; and outages of 90,000 user minutes that last 30 minutes or more and the number of user minutes affected by an OC3 or transport outage. The PUC issued a number of directives to carriers and the PUC Communications Division and Safety and Enforcement Division. TMI Briefing Service subscribers see Briefing dated 1/6/17.
