NARUC Notebook
“Broadband should be like water in a restaurant, something that comes with your meal,” said Kathleen Wallman, consultant with M2Z Wireless Networks and a former FCC bureau chief. She said modest-speed (300K), ad-supported Internet access should be included with basic telephone service: “Basic broadband connectivity should be free. If you want more than that, it would be available to purchase.” Wallman, a panel speaker at the NARUC annual meeting, said the U.S. lags far behind other nations in broadband penetration and service speed. “We need a different strategy for broadband deployment” for both wireline and wireless service. With wireless, she proposed the FCC grant exclusive 15-year leases of broadband spectrum and get a percentage of the annual revenue. E Copernicus consultant Chris McLean said ubiquitous broadband is “a national security imperative.” He said security demands multiple redundant broadband networks using both landline and wireless technologies. He said achieving universal broadband means policymakers and industry must take some risks: “There’s no single ’silver bullet’ solution for broadband development. It’s a layer cake of policy.” He said successful broadband policy should rely on market forces as much as possible, consider innovative approaches like spectrum leasing, support broadband with subsidies where necessary, create demand, and be flexible. He said that when govt. decides something is a genuine national priority, it generally gets done. He cited rural electrification and the national schools & libraries telecom program as examples. “We should be moving the broadband ball forward, getting it done, because broadband is important.” Consultant Bob Rowe, a former Mont. regulator, said broadband is changing the cost and revenue picture for providers. “Networks and costs don’t go away -- they change,” he said. For instance, he said, the rise of broadband is shifting costs from switching and general network operations to construction of new outside plant and to acquisition of content. He said that as broadband grows, providers will see less revenue from traditional narrowband phone services and more from selling new services made possible by broadband. But that demand for new services will stress the infrastructure and demand further investment. He said providers may need to consider new revenue models such as selling advertising.
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Achieving coordination among the multiple jurisdictions with E-911 responsibility in a market area is the single biggest obstacle to deployment of VoIP E-911 service, according to a joint study by NARUC and the National Emergency Numbering Administration (NENA) presented at the NARUC annual convention. “There are lots of moving parts involved in VoIP E-911 implementation so you can have lots of friction,” said Patrick Halley, NENA govt. affairs dir.: “The number one need is coordination and cooperation among the multiple entities involved.” He said VoIP E-911 rides on the wireless E-911 infrastructure, so it can’t be provided to the roughly 25% of the nation’s population not covered by wireless E-911. He said bringing VoIP E-911 to 3/4 of the nation’s population in less than 2 years is “an impressive achievement,” but making it ubiquitous means overcoming the barriers to deployment. Other major VoIP E-911 obstacles, he said, revolve around turf issues such as inconsistent requirements among local E-911 jurisdictions for testing and address validation. Tom Koutsky, chmn. of the North American Numbering Council, said there also needs to be a permanent national solution to assignment of “pseudo ANI” numbers for nomadic VoIP E-911 service to ensure there are sufficient numbers for this purpose. He also said that the 16 states without centralized oversight of E-911 service should create an agency or formally delegate responsibility to their state PUC.
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Despite being “a model for how govt. should respond to disaster” during the deadly hurricane season of 2005, the FCC created its new Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau because “more needed to be done” to prepare the agency for the next inevitable natural or man-made disaster, said Ian Dillner, aide to Comr. Tate, at the NARUC annual convention. He said the new bureau consolidates in one place disaster response duties that were scattered across 7 bureaus or offices and provides the federal point of contact for coordination with the state, tribal and local agencies involved in disaster preparation and recovery. He said states have the local contacts and cross-utility connections the FCC lacks, and the FCC can offer its ties with other federal agencies with the broadcast media. He said the new bureau took over the FCC’s policy roles in E-911 and emergency communications interoperability. It also will be the point of contact between the FCC and the National Communications System for landline and wireless telecom service priority restoration policy and govt. emergency telecom services, he said. It also will assume responsibility for network reliability and outage restoration policy, emergency spectrum coordination and overseeing post- disaster recovery of the telecom infrastructure. He said the FCC will continue being a support agency for other national- disaster prevention and recovery efforts by the Dept. of Homeland Security.
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Famed investor Warren Buffett, CEO of holding company Berkshire Hathaway, told a NARUC audience that “telecom is too tough a game for us.” He said telecom “is a field where there’s constant, enormous change. Change is a friend of society but an enemy of the investor.” He said telecom is like the airplane and automobile: “They changed the world but killed investors” as the number of competing companies plummeted from the hundreds to a handful. Buffett, keynoter at NARUC, said telecom is changing quickly and in unpredictable directions. “I can’t tell who the winner will be. I know that both sides will invest heavily, and I know that one of them will be doing the wrong thing. But I can’t predict which one.” Buffet said he prefers to invest in easy businesses: “Unlike an Olympic athlete, an investor doesn’t get extra points for degree of difficulty. I have 3 boxes on my desk -- in, out, and too hard -- and telecom’s in that ’too hard’ box.” In response to a question, Buffett said regulatory caprice is an investment deterrent: “If you fulfill your part of the bargain in good faith, you should get the promised reward.” Investors, he said, “don’t want a capricious regulatory environment.”