California PUC Announces New President

“The CPUC is one of the most important regulatory agencies in California, with oversight over industries that impact nearly every Californian,” said President Batjer. “I’m honored Governor Newsom selected me for this role as the state faces unprecedented challenges caused by wildfires and climate change. I look forward to working with my fellow Commissioners, the staff of the CPUC, and the many stakeholders to the CPUC’s processes to ensure that we are all benefiting the state and its consumers.”

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The Regulatory Mix Today: California PUC Announces New President, FCC Report on CenturyLink Outage, NTIA Announces 2019 Spectrum Policy Symposium

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FCC Report on CenturyLink Outage

The FCC released  report detailing the cause and impact of a nationwide CenturyLink network outage that occurred last December, along with recommendations to help prevent similar outages from occurring in the future.  Beginning on December 27, 2018, CenturyLink experienced an outage on its fiber network that lasted for almost 37 hours. As described in the report, the outage was caused by an equipment failure that was exacerbated by a network configuration error. The outage affected communications service providers, businesses customers, and consumers who relied upon CenturyLink’s transport services and resulted in extensive disruptions to phone and broadband service, including 911 calling.  As many as 22 million customers across 39 states were affected, including approximately 17 million customers across 29 states who lacked reliable access to 911.

The report outlines lessons learned from the incident and identifies specific network reliability best practices that, if implemented, could have prevented the outage, or at least mitigated its effects. These include:

• Turning off or disabling system features that are not in use;
• Including in network monitoring memory and processor utilization alarms that are regularly audited to ensure functionality and evaluated to improve early detection and calibration; and
• Having standard operating procedures for network repair that address cases where normal networking monitoring procedures are inoperable or otherwise unavailable.

NTIA Announces 2019 Spectrum Policy Symposium

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced the schedule for its 2019 symposium on spectrum policy.  NTIA will host the symposium on September 10, 2019, focusing on the development and implementation of a National Spectrum Strategy, pursuant to the Presidential Memorandum, released on October 25, 2018, on ‘‘Developing a  sustainable Spectrum Strategy for America’s Future.’’  

The symposium will focus on implementing and maintaining a sustainable national spectrum strategy that will enable the United States to strengthen its global leadership role in the introduction of wireless telecommunications technologies, services, and innovation, while also supporting the expansion of existing technologies and the nation’s homeland security, national defense, and other critical government missions.

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The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s 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 an Inteserra Briefing.

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