FCC Should Come up With PSTN Sunset Policy ‘Really Quickly,’ Advisory Council Member Urges
The FCC should formulate its position on closing down the public-switched telecommunications network “really quickly,” said Wireless Network Communications Research Center Vice-Provost Dennis Roberson Tuesday. “The firestorm is already really now. The conferences are all now really homing in on this point,” he said at an FCC Technology Advisory Council meeting. “We've really got to be crisp, really quickly. We're going to need a position from the FCC really quickly. This is spinning up really fast.”
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Over the summer, the council suggested “sunsetting” the old network by 2018 (CD June 30 p1). It generated headlines and controversy, but council members said Tuesday they were committed to coming up with concrete recommendations. Council Chairman Tom Wheeler urged all working groups to devise up to five “succinct, actionable” recommendations for the council’s December meeting.
OPASTCO Technical Director John McHugh agreed with Roberson that the retirement of the PSTN has become critical. “My email inbox filled up when the 2018 date came up,” he said, to laughs in the FCC meeting room.
2M Companies Chief Technology Officer Adam Drobot leads the council’s PSTN working group. He said he and his colleagues have come up with a white paper that discusses the impact of shedding the old network, but he doubted that they could come up with a “roadmap” for getting rid of the old network by December’s meeting. The PSTN became America’s “national system of record” and “we as a nation used it as a tool to achieve functional, economic and social goals,” Drobot said. “We now find ourselves in a world where other technologies have entered the marketplace. The important point to get across is that there is a point where the PSTN can no longer be that tool that achieves those economic and social goals of the nation. You come to a point where maintaining this infrastructure becomes increasingly expensive and at the same time you can’t achieve the goals you set.”
Whatever replaces the old network, it will have to be “an orderly system” to keep the nation’s records, Drobot said. Industry and the public will have to identify and help transition to “alternative mechanisms” to “achieve these goals,” he said.
Wireless is a pretty good candidate for replacing the old network, Cisco executive and PSTN working group member Russ Gyurek said. But “let’s not go off the deep end and assume that there’s going to be one technology choice,” he added. Nonetheless, policymakers face some thorny questions as they discuss retiring the PSTN, Gyurek said. For instance, what happens when subscribers begin using VoIP services from foreign companies? Then there are questions about e911 and disability access, Gyurek said.
"You all have really tackled a problem that’s hard to get your hands around,” Wheeler said. “What a significant undertaking this is.” Drobot said the working group will likely publish “the elements of a roadmap” -- what policy questions must be tackled, statistical analyses, etc. -- by December.
Also Tuesday, the council’s IPv6 working group said it was discussing such matters as an awareness campaign for the transition, lists of industry groups that “are central to evolution,” whether government procurement officers should favor IPv6 services and technology, and how best to work with retailers about the impending transition. Unlike the PSTN question, though, the IPv6 transition is not zero-sum, which takes some of the edge off the questions, working group leader and Comcast Senior Vice President Charlotte Field said Tuesday. The council’s spectrum working group said it will host a forum on deploying small cell sites on Oct. 28 at the FCC.