Pennsylvania PUC Telecom Rules Update Stalls
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission declined to advance an NPRM (or NOPR) on competitive classification of telecom retail services. The notice in docket L-2018-3001391 failed by a 2-2 vote at a Thursday commission meeting, while commissioners voted 4-0 on a…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
related motion by Vice Chairman David Sweet to partly grant and partly deny rural local exchange carriers’ request for waivers from the same regulations under review in the notice, a PUC spokesperson said. The votes followed a February commission ruling to extend waivers of certain regulations for Verizon through 2022 (see 2002270009). “The NOPR does not go far enough, as I believe there are additional opportunities to modernize our telephone regulations ... without compromising important consumer protections,” said Commissioner John Coleman. He wants to bring ILECs “closer to regulatory parity with their unregulated competitors,” he said. Chairman Gladys Brown Dutrieuille said she supports most of the notice’s recommendations but seeks to better reconcile “the need to address more transient technological and market changes with the more permanent statutory obligation” requiring the PUC “to address the safety, adequacy, reliability and privacy of telecommunications services and the ordering, installation, suspension, termination and restoration of any telecommunications service.” Dutrieuille said “absolute parity may not be attainable” between ILECs and other providers: “ILECs alone have the critical and important carrier of last resort (COLR) obligation to serve all consumers within their respective territory.”