The FCC is focused on Puerto Rico's specific issues, Chairman Ajit Pai assured House Commerce Vice Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and other lawmakers in a letter posted Thursday. The agency drew “lessons from the 2017 Hurricane Season to help inform our preparedness efforts and future incident response,” he said. “The unique aspects of responding to disasters in remote areas, such as hilly, rural parts of Puerto Rico, highlighted several key areas of preparedness. Here, satellite communications and high frequency (HF) radio, such as amateur radio, take on greater significance for more isolated areas.” The FCC found it must “engage actively year-round with critical infrastructure sectors and state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments to better address and position communications needs in times of disaster” and created the Hurricane Recovery Task Force, he said.

The head of the Washington, D.C.’s 911 call center welcomes a possible audit by the Office of the D.C. Auditor next year, amid a growing furor over reported dispatching problems. “I know what we do in this agency,” D.C. Office of Unified Communications Director Karima Holmes said Thursday on WAMU(FM) Washington’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show. “It is not a systematic problem in D.C. 911. These things happen, but fortunately we have safety nets in place to make sure they don’t.” Holmes disputed 911 dispatch expert Dave Statter’s reports alleging frequent mistakes that others have also glommed onto in criticizing OUC and saying its errors could cost first responders priceless time answering emergency medical and other calls for help. “Sharing snippets of radio traffic and other incomplete piecemeal records just do not accurately convey the full picture here,” said Holmes. “Dave Statter is not my oversight.” The mayor, deputy mayor and city council oversee OUC and “have this information,” she said. “All of that gets investigated, and we do a full investigation” that includes the 911 call and what information the caller gave, she said. “Anytime an error is made, we address it.” A caller to the radio program identified as Christina said her daughter’s teenage friend watched her mother die from a heart attack as D.C. 911 sent responders to the wrong address. Holmes replied it’s a tragic situation, though she didn’t know the specific incident. “Things are hard,” she said. “People are in the middle of emergencies, and sometimes that address is wrong, and sometimes it is the call-taker” who “takes the call wrong.” Statter told the radio program he wants more transparency and accountability from OUC. Holmes told the D.C. Council only four times last year when dispatchers were sent to incorrect addresses and 21 times in five years, but Statter “can show 38 bad addresses since December,” he said. OUC recently responded to our Freedom of Information Act request for records on previous 911 dispatching issues (here), and Thursday we sent another FOIA request for records on three late-August incidents. OUC responded more than 24 hours later to our request for comment on our Wednesday report about those three incidents: “We caution against the use of publicly available partial records of emergency operations as they generally do not include the full emergency response and may inaccurately present critical variables such as the nature or fluidity of the emergency, the engagement between the caller and call-taker, and/or the extent or duration of the dispatch,” a spokesperson emailed.

XO Communications seeks to partly abandon telephone services in Washington, D.C., the Verizon subsidiary said Tuesday. The telco said it seeks approval to abandon local exchange voice services on Nov. 30 but doesn’t plan to surrender its certificate and would remain a CLEC in the District. XO will continue to provide switched access and non-jurisdictional services, said the filing in case TA1998-08.

Oregon Public Utility Commission staff seeks comments by Tuesday on draft rules for implementing an Oregon law requiring VoIP and wireless contribution to state USF (see 2008240049), the PUC said in docket AR-640 Tuesday. The Oregon PUC aims to finalize rules by Jan. 1.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission should keep the revenue-based USF contribution for business and government services because it’s less complex than a connections-based mechanism, big telecom and cable companies said in comments received Monday and emailed to us Wednesday. The PSC is proposing to expand its connections-based method that now applies only to residential services (see 2008110047). “Business customers' connections may fluctuate” and “the applicable surcharge would need to be examined, and potentially changed on a monthly basis,” Cox Communications, Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable commented jointly in docket NUSF-119. Large business customers might relocate to a lesser taxed state due to rate shock, the cablers warned. Carriers understand revenue-based contribution; applying contributions to business and government services “will be complex, costly and confusing,” said AT&T. Complexities applying the connections method to business and government services have increased in the past three years, said CenturyLink. COVID-19 “has caused an unprecedented shift to work from home and away from business communications services which is likely to impact the analysis,” it added. Nebraska law requires revenue-based contribution for prepaid wireless services, said CTIA. A connections method for residential services stabilized and increased the fund, so "the financial threat to the NUSF viability has been overcome,” said Frontier Communications. Moving to connections for business and government lines is "impractical at this time," said Windstream. Small rural telcos countered that applying connections-based contribution for all kinds of services is fairer. “Much of rural Nebraska remains unserved or underserved," and current remittances "will come nowhere close" to providing enough support, commented the Rural Telecommunications Coalition of Nebraska. Exempt prepaid wireless, toll revenue and directory, private line and paging services, which don't lend themselves to a connections-based surcharge, said a state group of rural independent companies. Keep revenue-based at least for institutional operator service providers, urged Securus, saying it doesn’t “have the ability to determine or charge the NUSF applying a connections-based methodology" because it charges prison customers per call.

West Virginia can’t force Frontier Communications to deploy fiber as a condition for clearing its bankruptcy reorganization, the company said Monday at the Public Service Commission. PSC staff suggested that in an Aug. 25 letter, after earlier proposing a condition the carrier ensure it has enough money to implement recommendations from a recent audit (see 2008200032). Noting last month's court approval (see 2008210052), Frontier urged quickly OK'ing its petition.

The first meeting of the FCC’s reauthorized Intergovernmental Advisory Committee will be held virtually Sept. 22 but isn’t open to the public, said a notice. It noted IAC meetings are always closed.

New Orleans is mulling how it may legally deploy municipal fiber under competitive restrictions, said city Chief Information Officer Kimberly LaGrue Monday at NATOA’s virtual conference. State rules prevent cities from creating fiber broadband networks, LaGrue said: “We’re looking for legal opinions.” To ease potential ISP concerns, the city plans to make “some offers" for "partnerships that they could live with,” she said. “We don’t want to offer service to residents.” Municipal fiber is key to equitably distributing internet “as a utility to our residents,” said the CIO. The project recently got city council OK; the locality next will design fiber rings and seek bond funding, she said. Dublin, Ohio, has a fiber network for government, public safety and businesses, but the city isn’t selling to residents, said CIO Doug McCullough, although “eventually, we are going to have to become a service provider if we want to see broadband as a utility.” Boston Broadband and Cable Director Mike Lynch said broadband “should have been a utility back in 1996,” but “25 years later, we can’t put the cork back in the bottle.” That creates a “dilemma” for local governments seeking to address digital equity, he said. “I don’t think we can go back and make it a utility. On the other hand, we have to find the dollars to make it available.” Boston’s Wicked Free Wi-Fi uses the city’s network that’s “supposed to be for municipal use only,” so the municipality is careful to limit hot spots to parks, government buildings and business districts, Lynch said. “We do not try to make it available in home. We are not seeking to compete with broadband providers who gave us this fiber under the caveat that we would not compete with them.” NATOA plans to return its conference to Denver in 2022, this year’s original location before it went virtual due to COVID-19, Executive Director Tonya Rideout said. “What about 2021?” Rideout asked. “Well, the truth is we don’t know.” Depending on the pandemic and restoration of members’ travel and training budgets, next year’s conference could be virtual, in-person or a hybrid, she said.

Comments on Pennsylvania’s proposed telecom regulations overhaul will be due 45 days after the NPRM is published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, the state’s Public Utility Commission said Friday. Replies would be due 30 days after comments, the PUC said. The commission voted 4-0 Thursday to adopt the notice (see 2008270046). The soonest the item can appear in the Bulletin is mid-September, a PUC spokesperson said.

The California Public Utilities Commission rejected AT&T’s appeal of a $3.75 million fine for not providing next-generation 911 in the state (see 2005050042). “None of the errors alleged by AT&T in its Appeal is meritorious and no material change in the Presiding Officer’s decision is warranted in response to them,” said a modified decision Wednesday in docket R.18-03-011. AT&T will review the decision and respond, a spokesperson said.