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CWA urges FCC to preserve regulations that protect copper network customers

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There is much the Commission can do to accelerate private sector investment in high-speed networks, close the digital divide, and promote digital inclusion. CWA fully supports policies that promote fiber expansion and does not believe that incumbent carriers should be required to maintain two networks indefinitely. But the policy proposals in this NPRM, NOI, and Request for Comment have nothing to do with accelerating broadband investment, and everything to do with allowing broadband providers to weaken or eliminate essential consumer protections, endanger public and worker safety, and undermine universal service obligations.

CWA urges the Commission take the following action that will facilitate private sector investment in broadband infrastructure while fostering the Commission’s enduring values of public safety, universal service, consumer protection, and competition during and after the technology transitions:

  1. Pole Attachments. The Commission should reject “one-touch, make-ready” proposals that short-circuit safe processes, leave third parties and their contractors without accountability for poor or unsafe work, and violate legally-binding collective bargaining agreements, eliminating good jobs in the community. The Commission should maintain its current timeframes governing pole attachments or, in the alternative, ensure that any changes in the timelines are sufficient to complete all aspects of the work (survey, cost estimate, make-ready, and inspection) safely and accurately.

  2. Copper Retirement. The Commission should retain the retail customer 90-day advance notification of copper-to-fiber migration. Clear, timely, and sufficient advance notice facilitates network upgrades by giving consumers the information and time they need to prepare for change. The Commission should maintain de factoretirement in its definition of copper retirement as a deterrent to incumbent LECs’ failure to maintain copper networks and as an incentive to upgrade those networks to fiber.

  3. Preemption of State and Local Laws.  State laws that require incumbent carriers to maintain adequate facilities and equipment serve to further Commission broadband goals by requiring incumbent LECs to improve copper networks, which deliver DSL service, and encouraging incumbent carriers to upgrade to fiber to avoid copper maintenance costs. Moreover, Commission preemption of state and local statutes that promote universal service, consumer protection, public safety and welfare, and quality telecommunications service or manage rights-of-way and require fair and reasonable compensation for the use of public facilities would violate the language of Sections 253(b) and 253(c) of the Communications Act.

  4. Functional Equivalent Test. Congress enacted Section 214(a) of the Communications Act to make sure that the people in communities that have relied on a particular service are not harmed by its discontinuance, reduction, or impairment of that service. That task is a critical part of encouraging technology transitions. The Commission’s “functional test” correctly assesses the circumstances of the affected community to determine whether a replacement service exists. Stripping down the Section 214 protections would be a dangerous disservice to communities, particularly small towns and rural areas, where a functionally equivalent alternative may not be available.

Read the full comments here.

 

Link:

Communications Workers of America Submits Comments to FCC on Proposed Gutting of Regulations to Protect Legacy Copper Network Customers (CWA, June 15, 2016)