California Commission Weighs COLR Rules' Relevance

California’s nearly 30-year-old COLR rules require certain ILECs to provide basic voice service to those who request it in the companies’ territories. State commissioners last June opened the current rulemaking (docket R.24-06-012) to take a fresh look at COLR rules after rejecting regulatory relief for AT&T (see 2406200065). Afterward, an AT&T-backed state bill to update COLR rules stalled in the legislature (see 2407010052). The CPUC proceeding could inspire similar proceedings elsewhere, state and industry officials signaled during the NARUC conference in July (see 2407150035).

“Technological innovation and the flourishing of competition across much of the state have upended many of the assumptions on which [COLR rules] were based," said AT&T in comments released Wednesday. The CPUC should quickly end COLR obligations for "areas that are well-served with broadband today because consumers with broadband service have access to voice services," the incumbent said. The same goes for areas lacking a population, existing COLR basic telephone customers or serviceable locations as shown in the FCC's national broadband map, it said. “In populated areas where [AT&T] is currently the COLR and there is no other voice provider, it commits to remaining the COLR until circumstances warrant a change," it said. However, rather “than today’s COLR construct, California should ensure that it has suitably funded programs to support broadband deployment in populated areas without sufficient service.”

Consolidated Communications said it faces "pervasive wireline and wireless competition” in greater Sacramento, where it's classified as an ILEC. "In the face of these competitive pressures, Consolidated’s traditional voice service has experienced a steady and precipitous decline in subscribership, with a 65% loss in voice access lines over the past 10 years.” And yet, complained Consolidated, the company "remains subject to the archaic requirements" of California's COLR designation.

The CPUC "should not delay COLR relief in urban and suburban markets,” said Frontier Communications, another ILEC with COLR obligations. Frontier's urban markets in California like Long Beach and suburban markets like Thousand Oaks "are not the types of markets where the retention of COLR requirements is needed.”

Imposing COLR obligations only on ILECs in a competitive market "is outdated, unnecessary and inequitable,” said multiple TDS carriers: The CPUC should give COLR relief to incumbents that don't take high-cost support and can show enough competition.

Consumer advocates disagreed. "There must be an obligation that ensures customers have access to affordable, high quality, and reliable essential communications services as the networks that serve them are modernized,” said the CPUC’s independent Public Advocates Office: All Californians must have access to new technologies, but many still lack broadband with 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload speeds and have no choice of provider. PAO said the CPUC should amend the definition of "basic service" to include broadband and condition "provisional authorization to end the COLR obligation on ... complete deployment of broadband basic service across the [provider's] service area.”

"The COLR obligation … remains essential,” jointly commented The Utility Reform Network, Communications Workers of America and the Center for Accessible Technology. "While the Commission should take advantage of the opportunity to update the COLR requirements by, for example, allowing VoIP providers to request COLR designation and including broadband as part of basic service, the Commission should leave the fundamental requirement that a COLR provide basic service to anyone who requests it unchanged.” If the CPUC grants a provider relief from COLR obligations, it must ensure customers' transition to another provider is "painless," the consumer and worker advocates said.

"Ensuring that a comparable voice service is available before an existing COLR may withdraw is critical to providing Californians with access to emergency services, government information and assistance, education and social interaction,” said a group advocating for geographically isolated Californians. “Because no alternate COLR exists in the major ILEC territories, it will be necessary for a replacement COLR to be identified,” it said. “Requiring existing COLRs to work closely with replacement COLRs to facilitate handoff of copper facilities that the ILECs apparently have no interest in preserving or utilizing is the only feasible way to address COLRs’ desire to exit the POTS market and to protect consumers.”

Other interest groups also supported the obligations. Small businesses need reliable communications, said Small Business Utility Advocates. So do farmers and ranchers, said the California Farm Bureau Association. “Several counties throughout the state face periodic emergencies and have limited connectivity through wireless service and are thus dependent upon available [landlines] to ensure that they can reach services and contacts when necessary,” the farm group said. "Our members view the reliance upon landlines as a minimum service that cannot be abandoned without assurances of reliable service."

This "legacy service obligation is no longer appropriate in today’s competitive environment,” countered USTelecom. "Despite the clear, irreversible shift away from traditional POTS, the CPUC’s COLR rules in effect require keeping copper services available for a small and shrinking number of consumers, instead of transitioning them to receive better service with a different technology." Eliminating them won't leave customers without service, said the national association whose members include the biggest ILECs. "Loosening the ties to old networks will increase their already abundant communications options by facilitating advanced network deployment."

Meanwhile, the California Broadband & Video Association pushed back against possibly widening the rules’ scope. The cable group urged that the CPUC “limit COLR obligations to existing COLRs in the increasingly small number of areas in California that lack competition, as many other states have done, and decline to require new providers to become COLRs.”