Jimm Phillips

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is scheduled to reconsider Thursday whether to submit comments to the FCC supporting the federal body’s net neutrality Title II NPRM, though at our deadline Wednesday it was unclear whether a vote on the issue would proceed. An industry lawyer who has dealings with the CPUC told us Commissioner Carla Peterman was seeking to hold off on a vote on submitting comments until the commission’s Oct. 16 meeting. A CPUC spokesman said the net neutrality comments remained on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting, but an official list of held items wouldn’t be released until later Wednesday. Peterman and other CPUC commissioners didn’t comment.

The Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga, Tennessee (docket 14-116), and Wilson, North Carolina (docket 14-115), struck back against opponents of their petitions to the FCC to pre-empt their states’ municipal broadband laws. Pre-emption opponents “have not successfully rebutted” the municipalities’ argument that the FCC has authority under Communications Act Section 706 “to remove State barriers to community broadband initiatives,” Chattanooga and Wilson said in separate but similar reply comments. The positions of pre-emption supporters and opponents didn’t appear to shift much based on filings available Tuesday, with state governments and multiple industry groups continuing to oppose the petitions on states’ rights grounds.

New Jersey smartphone kill switch legislation is likely to move forward in October when the state General Assembly could take up the bill, said Deputy Speaker Patrick Diegnan in an interview Friday. A3157 had the unanimous support of the Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee, said Diegnan, the Democratic committee vice chairman and a main sponsor of the bill. Democratic Deputy Majority Leader Thomas Giblin and Republican Assembly BettyLou DeCroce are the bill’s other primary sponsors, while Democratic Assemblymen Joseph Cryan and Benjie Wimberly are co-sponsors. A3157 mirrors California’s Smartphone Theft Prevention Act (SB-962), which passed in late August and takes effect July 1, Diegnan said. A3157 would prohibit retailers in New Jersey from selling smartphones that don’t include kill switch technology effective Jan. 1 and would require the technology to be opt-out, meaning a device’s owner would need to “affirmatively elect” to disable the technology rather than elect to enable it. Diegnan said he believes New Jersey needs to enact its own kill switch requirement even though supporters of SB-962 have said that bill’s enactment means its requirements are effectively a nationwide requirement because of the size of California’s market. “The No. 1 issue that’s going to be facing my kids and grandkids is privacy,” he said. “When we carry around our cellphones, we're really carrying access to data that could really be hurtful and potentially dangerous. To me, it’s technology that’s available and should be mandated.” Nevada and New York are also moving forward with legislation, though both states’ legislatures won’t take up those bills until reconvening early next year. Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, had been leading development of her state’s kill switch legislation, but it’s now in the hands of the state legislature, a spokeswoman said.

Executives who are members of Communications Security, Reliability & Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Working Group 4 said they're optimistic about ongoing FCC efforts to improve the communications sector’s cyber-risk management. Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson said during an FCBA event Tuesday night that FCC work on cybersecurity via CSRIC and other efforts “won’t be a recipe for perfection,” but he hopes it will improve the resiliency of 911 and other communications networks. “I think we'll see that in the outage reports” and other data, he said. Working Group 4 updated CSRIC Wednesday on its work to adapt the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework for communications sector use. (See separate report in this issue.) Working Group 4 Co-Chairman Robert Mayer had told us before the CSRIC meeting that the group had made “substantial progress” on that work (CD Sept 24 p4).

Communications Security, Reliability & Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Working Group 4 will be able to report at CSRIC’s meeting Wednesday that it has made “substantial progress” on its work to use the National Institute for Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework for communications sector needs, said Working Group 4 Co-Chair Robert Mayer in an interview.

Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority should adopt the public interest settlement agreed to by Frontier Communications, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen and state Consumer Counsel Elin Swanson Katz as part of PURA’s ongoing review of the telco’s proposed purchase of AT&T’s broadband, video and wireline assets in the state, said Jepsen’s and Katz’s offices Friday. The settlement, along with additional voluntary commitments from Frontier, “has satisfied the applicable criteria” PURA requires for approval of Frontier/AT&T Connecticut and makes it acceptable on public interest grounds, said Jepsen’s and Katz’s offices in a joint filing (http://bit.ly/1r6SoKE). Frontier reached the agreement with the two state offices in August (CD Aug 13 p13), but PURA later sought a redraft (CD Sept 3 p16).

Call completion record-keeping requirements associated with the rural call completion order the FCC approved in October (CD Oct 29 p2) haven’t taken effect, but major telcos said Friday they're planning to at least partially comply with the rules anyway. The record-keeping requirements mandate that telcos collect call completion data on calls destined to rural ILECs, report that data to the FCC every quarter and retain the data for six months. Those rules haven’t taken effect because the Office of Management and Budget’s review of the rules remains “underway,” said Claude Aiken, Wireline Bureau Competition Policy Division acting deputy chief, at an FCBA event. The FCC’s relationship with OMB on large-scale information collection policy has been “rocky lately” but the commission is hopeful it can work with OMB to make the call completion rules “sail through,” Aiken said. The FCC has received four requests for waivers and five petitions for reconsideration of the rules, he said. Representatives from AT&T and CenturyLink said the telcos intend to submit as much call completion data as possible, but both telcos are also seeking waivers on the record-keeping rules. AT&T would have trouble fully complying with the rules because it would “have to update some very old switches” that the telco no longer maintains because it’s phasing them out as part of its transition to an all-IP network, said Brian Benison, director-federal regulatory. AT&T filed a waiver request seeking to provide data only on a “statistically significant” portion of calls on which it does track call completion data, he said. CenturyLink is implementing the safe harbor policies included in the order, which will “significantly reduce our use of intermediate carriers,” said Jeb Benedict, vice president-federal regulatory affairs. CenturyLink is also seeking a waiver of the reporting rules so it won’t have to report data on calls that involve multifrequency signaling and LEC-to-LEC calls -- two types of calls it’s technically difficult to collect data on, he said.

The FCC is confident the communications industry will voluntarily lead commission-facilitated efforts to improve the industry’s cybersecurity risk management practices, but could look to its recent 911 annual reliability audit order as a model for regulatory action if the industry doesn’t “pull it together,” said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson Wednesday. Simpson’s remarks at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event echoed the FCC’s message all year on the need for a voluntary industry-led effort on cybersecurity risk management. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in June that the FCC’s vision of a “new paradigm” on cybersecurity would include readiness to act if voluntary efforts failed (CD June 13 p1).

The U.S. government needs to continue to push for expanded cybersecurity information sharing capabilities as a way to protect critical infrastructure sectors, federal officials said Tuesday during a Billington cybersecurity conference. Recent federal efforts have focused on expanding information sharing via legislation like the House-passed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), but former federal officials and industry stakeholders expressed doubts that Congress can complete effective legislation during the 113th Congress. The Senate Intelligence Committee cleared its own CISPA equivalent, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), but industry officials have said they're increasingly pessimistic that the full Senate will vote on the bill this year (CD July 30 p6 ).

Recent shifts in the makeup of FirstNet’s board will likely improve its relations with state governments, while other changes within the authority in recent months have significantly improved prospects for success, said participants and observers in interviews last week. The Department of Commerce said earlier this month that it was appointing five new members to FirstNet’s board, and reappointing board member Ed Reynolds. The new members include ex-Vermont Republican Gov. Jim Douglas and Houston Mayor Annise Parker, a Democrat. Salt Lake City Chief of Police Chris Burbank, telecom executive Frank Plastina and Richard Stanek, sheriff of Hennepin County, Minnesota, are also new to the board (CD Sept 5 p13). The board set its first meeting with the new members for Tuesday and Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1uLMJca).