A cable cut by a contractor in Pleasant Grove, Utah, knocked out Qwest business phone service in the city and surrounding towns for several hours Thurs. Residential local service wasn’t affected directly, but the cable cut took out 911 service for about 90 min. until calls could be rerouted. The cut also affected wholesale service to CLECs. There were no reports of anyone suffering because of inability to reach 911.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Commissioners’ aides suggested the FCC will take a hands-off approach to wireless broadband much as it has with cable modem and DSL. On a CTIA conference panel here late Tues., advisers to Chmn. Martin and Comrs. Abernathy and Adelstein stressed the Commission’s emphasis on regulatory parity and the success it claims from its historically light touch with wireless. But a non-interventionist thrust doesn’t mean the FCC wouldn’t act on social obligations like security, 911 and access for the disabled, or act in response to market failures, said Fred Campbell of Martin’s staff.

Vonage praised the FCC for extending the deadline for interconnected VoIP service providers to get customers’ affirmative acknowledgments about 911 service limitations. The FCC Enforcement Bureau said Tues. it won’t act against VoIP providers who got such acknowledgments from at least 90% of their subscribers. Providers missing the 90% cutoff won’t face enforcement until Oct. 31, the Bureau said (CD Sept 28 p5). Vonage said Wed. it has affirmative acknowledgments from nearly 99% of customers and will continue to pursue them from the last 10,000. It said it will tell the FCC when it hits 100%. “We are also working as hard as we can to turn E-911 up as quickly as possible to meet the FCC’s 120-day requirement,” Vonage Chmn. Jeffrey Citron said. VoIP providers were ordered to make their systems E-911 compliant by Nov. 28. Vonage said it expects to make E-911 available to the majority of its customers before year’s end.

A water pipe break in a Verizon’s toll switching office in Concord, N.H., knocked out landline toll service across southern N.H. for over 3 hours at midday Mon. The disruption affected some local service and caused delays in completing 911 calls rerouted around the damaged switch, Verizon said. Local calls could be completed but toll and long distance calls couldn’t. The impact hit counties south of Concord 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m.. Verizon said a water line to the air conditioning plant broke. Water leaked onto the tandem switch equipment, causing a shutdown. The problem didn’t affect Verizon cellphone service.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau “will not pursue enforcement actions” against interconnected VoIP service providers that obtained affirmative acknowledgments about 911 service limitations from at least 90% of their subscribers, it said. But the Bureau said it expects those providers would continue seeking the remaining acknowledgments and would notify the FCC once they've reached 100% compliance. “It’s evident that many providers have devoted significant resources to notifying each of their subscribers of the limitations of their 911 service,” the Bureau said based on providers’ progress reports. The Sept. reports, for example, show that at least 21 providers got acknowledgments from 100% of their subscribers and at least 32 others from 90% or more, it said. As for providers that didn’t receive acknowledgments from at least 90% of their subscriber, the Bureau said it would forbear from enforcing its requirement until Oct. 31, as long as those providers report to the FCC on the compliance status by Oct. 25. The status reports should “detail the efforts that [providers] have undertaken to obtain acknowledgments from the remainder of their subscriber base, explain why they have been unable to achieve an acknowledgment percentage closer to 100% and provide the current percentage of acknowledgments that they have received as of the date of filing,” the Bureau said.

Telcos and wireless providers said Fri. they were working to ensure viable communications if Hurricane Rita knocked out coastal Tex. operations centers. Verizon and SBC said they were collaborating with federal emergency management and had activated emergency operations centers. They had technicians ready to make repairs and had reinforced switching center offices with sandbags, plywood and other materials. Officials also were working closely with state and local agencies to coordinate emergency communications.

More than 50% of U.S. PSAPs still don’t receive wireless E-911 Phase II location information, the National Emergency Number Assn. (NENA) said. NENA released a report as part of a Transportation Dept. wireless deployment project. Lack of PSAP funding and deployment coordination remain the main roadblocks to Phase II implementation, NENA and public safety officials told us.

The FCC should have more authority to handle coordination of emergency communications during disasters, Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) said Thurs. at a hearing. One key example would be to give the Commission power over credentialing employees to enter disaster areas -- a role now largely performed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Stevens said. “We want to have a plan in place to be able to get in touch with people,” Stevens said. FCC Chmn. Martin said the additional authority Stevens envisioned would be “good,” but said the Commission would still work with FEMA “since they are the ones on the ground.”

Comcast customers will use its VoD service 50% more times by year-end than the company had expected. Comcast now expects 1.5 billion “hits,” Co-CFO John Alchin said at a Banc of America Securities investor conference in San Francisco. Comcast VoIP is available to 12 million homes, and 15 million households will be able to get it by year- end. The service -- $39.95 for subscribers to 3 Comcast products -- will be “a new growth engine,” Alchin predicted. “We think [Comcast] will be highly competitive in the market” with Comcast Digital Voice, he said. Some 1,000 Comcast employees are working on the voice business; E-911, billing, provisioning and customer service “are all in place,” Alchin said. The company is providing “redundancy” for E-911, Alchin said. The introduction of digital simulcasting has helped boost certain revenue about $4 a customer monthly, he said. The company’s Enhanced Basic product, offering DTV and VoD at no charge, is reducing customer churn and not affecting sales of a fuller digital product that costs about $15 monthly. “It’s this product that’s going to enable us to drive the digital penetration beyond the 42% that it’s at now,” he said. Comcast’s VoIP is considered a primary phone service, said Charlotte Field, senior vp-national communications engineering & operations. Comcast, which has extensively tested 911 readiness, must have 3 paths of emergency communication under regulations in many areas, she said. Part of the e-911 service uses the firm’s existing circuit-switched equipment, said Cathy Avgiris, senior vp-Comcast voice services. “Comcast has been in the phone business since our merger with AT&T Broadband,” she said. “We understand how 911 works and how e911 works, and we've leveraged all of that experience.” - JM

Verizon denied charges by Cavalier Telephone in Va. that it misused proprietary Cavalier 911 database information to support its petition for Corporation Commission approval of its merger with MCI. Cavalier alleged Verizon violated 911 service agreements restricting use of Cavalier information only to administer the E-911 location database. Cavalier asked that any information taken from it be stricken from the merger case record. Verizon said the only Cavalier data used in the merger filing (Case PUC-2005-00051) was total line count, which it included to support its claim of abundant local competition in Va. Verizon said there’s precedent for using competitor line count data in recent Va. cases, such as Verizon’s long distance entry petition and alternative regulation cases. Verizon said it introduced competitor line-count data at the specific request of the Va. staff for state-specific competition data. Verizon denied using any Cavalier 911 data for marketing purposes. Verizon also said Cavalier lacks standing to intervene in the merger case at this late date. Meanwhile XO Communications, an intervenor in the case, filed a similar motion asking for a ruling that Verizon can’t use any 911 information from CLECs for any purpose other than running the E-911 system. The commission told parties to address XO’s motion in post hearing briefs due Sept. 23.