District of Columbia Outage Reporting
The PSC released a Notice of Second Proposed Rulemaking of its intent to amend its outage reporting regulations. The proposed amendments would require telecommunications service providers reporting telecommunications service outages to identify the most specific location of the service outage and the geographic area affected by the service outage available when the initial report is filed and the actual location of the service outage in the telecommunications service provider's network and the geographic area affected in the final report. A previous NOPR seeking to amend these rules was published in January 2017. Comments and reply comments may be submitted no later than October 16, 2017 and October 30, 2017, respectively.
FCC Instructions For Filing Of 4G LTE Coverage Data
The FCC released a Public Notice providing instructions for filing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) coverage data pursuant to the Mobility Fund-II Challenge Process Order. Filers must collect and submit the data using the process and format described in the attached Instructions no later than 90 days after the FCC publishes notice that the Office of Management and Budget has approved the one-time information collection request. Provider-specific information submitted as part of the data collection will be treated as confidential. Data must be filed by any entity that (a) previously reported LTE coverage on FCC Form 477 and (b) has qualified 4G LTE coverage based on the specification established in the FCC’s Order of download speeds of 5 Mbps at the cell edge with 80% probability and a 30% cell loading factor. Entities that previously reported LTE coverage on FCC Form 477 but do not have qualified 4G LTE coverage as described above must respond and certify that their coverage does not qualify.
Hurricane Updates
The FCC also issued its latest status report of communications services in geographic areas impacted by Hurricane Maria as of September 24, 2017, at 11:00 AM EDT. The report incorporates network outage data submitted by communications providers to the FCC’s Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) which is currently activated for all counties in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The FCC reported that:
The FCC also extended the EAS Test Reporting System (ETRS) filing deadline for Emergency Alert System test System participants affected by the hurricanes. This applies to participants in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as in portions of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, whose ability to participate in the Nationwide EAS Test or submit the ETRS filings required on September 27, 2017. EAS Participants affected by the Hurricanes, have until November 13, 2017, to file corrections to Form One and may also file Form Two at the same time as Form Three. Affected EAS Participants taking advantage of this extension should describe their particular circumstances in Form Three. For unaffected EAS Participants, the previously announced deadlines remain in effect.
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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.