ACTION ALERT: pls CALL NYS DPS head re: telecommunications hearing

ACTION ALERT: pls CALL NYS DPS head re: telecommunications hearing

The DPS is so far refusing to shut off the Wi-Fi for this hearing about telecommunications in NY to make the premises accessible for people with electrohypersensitivity.  Some comment was made by the venue, the NY Institute of Technology- that they aren't in the business of dealing with a few people's unusual needs.

The hearing is in the basement, so it should be easy enough to shut off the Wi-Fi there.

The Department of Justice has indicated that public hearings need to be made accessible- and especially if the topic under discussion affects the class that is barred from entry due to an access barrier.

Please consider leaving a respectful message for the Secretary of The Department of Public Service, Kathleen Burgess, to ask that the Wi-Fi be shut off in New York on Wednesday

HER DIRECT DIAL IS (518) 474-4535

----- Forwarded Message -----

Subject: hearing info and excerpts re: NYS Department of Public Service Notice of Public Hearing

All- below is info about next week's hearing and excerpts from the NY Telecommunications Study.

it is important that those concerned abt wireless make a showing

                              

Wednesday, July 15

NY Institute of Technology

1871 Broadway (between 61 st & 62nd) New York, NY 10023

Information Session — 6:30 pm 

Public Statement Hearing — 7:30 pm

to access the Telecommunications Study, go to: www.dps.ny.qov/TelStudy

key excerpts from Study to be discussed at the hearing:

page 11:

Migration to wireless communications has been a major trend in voice services.  Along 

with the proliferation of advanced personal electronics with improved features and functionality, and the emergence of Wi-Fi hotspots, wireless networks have led to a new era of voice communications.  As these networks continue to deploy more advanced technologies, like LTE, consumers are expected to experience greater quality and reliability which could lead to additional future migrations as their primary voice platform.  The move to wireless platforms is not limited to wireless cellular networks, however, as cable companies have also begun to offer wireless voice services over their expanded Wi-Fi networks.

pages 13&14:

The trend away from traditional wireline services aligns with both National and State 

surveys of consumer preference. The most recent National Health Interview Survey on Wireless Substitution, commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, dated July 2014, found that, “the number of American homes with only wireless telephones continues to grow.  Two in every five American homes (41.0%) had only wireless telephones.”  In the 2006 Competition III Order (Comp III Order), the Commission noted that 9.4% of U.S. wireless 20 subscribers used a wireless phone as their primary phone.  In New York, a November 2014 survey conducted by the Siena College Research Institute in New York for AT&T indicated that 28% of upstate households (21% statewide) rely only on mobile wireless for voice service.   

page 17:

Regulatory Oversight  

The Commission’s regulatory policies and practices over telecommunication providers 

have evolved with technological changes in the industry.  In 1994, the Commission initiated its Competition II proceeding which articulated its four overarching “core” principles: (1) ensuring the provision of quality telecommunications services at reasonable rates, (2) where feasible, allowing competition to be the most efficient means to achieve that goal, (3) recognizing that regulation should reflect market conditions, and (4) acknowledging that providers in like circumstances should be subject to like regulations. Throughout this transition to more competitive markets, the Commission has attempted to balance the needs of consumers for protection from business practices that might endanger their health, safety and welfare against the adequacy of market forces to provide those protections.  

page 20:

 At the time of the Commission Order adopting Verizon’s revised SQIP, the company reported approximately 400,000 core customers and 4.96 million total access lines.  As of December 2014, through customer migrations to other services and service providers (including Verizon wireless or other VoIP companies) or other circumstances, the number of core customers remaining on the Verizon’s wireline network has declined to less than 200,000, a reduction of about 50%.   

Lifeline Telephone Service 

The Lifeline telephone service program was implemented by the FCC in 1985 in the 

wake of the 1984 divestiture of AT&T.  Its initial purpose was to ensure that any increase in local rates that occurred following major changes in the marketplace would not make local phone service unaffordable for low-income households and result in service disconnection. There are mechanisms in place to ensure that carriers recover their cost of providing Lifeline service.  Those carriers designated as Eligible Telecommunications Carriers (ETC) are eligible to receive Federal Universal Service Funding for Lifeline up to $9.25 per customer.  New York carriers are also allowed recovery of their Lifeline costs, exclusive of any Federal Lifeline support, via procedures governed by the Targeted Accessibility Fund of New York, Inc.   

Lifeline service being available to traditional and competitive wireline customers, Time Warner Cable also offers a VoIP-based Lifeline service. 

Subscribership to traditional wireline Lifeline services in New York peaked in 1996, at 

more than 768,000 lines.  Since then, Lifeline enrollment has been declining and, as of year-end 2014, total wireline enrollment in New York amounted to only 137,000 lines.   

 

Part of the recent decline in wireline Lifeline is due to an FCC initiative to eliminate 

duplicative subscriptions, including thousands in New York, where customers were enrolled and receiving both wireline and wireless Lifeline services.  Those customers were given the choice of maintaining either a wireline or wireless Lifeline service, but not both.  The net result of that reform was that many customers dropped their wireline enrollments for wireless Lifeline service, and the wireline figures for 2012 and 2013 declined further as duplicate enrollments were eliminated from the system. 

 

The most significant growth in the Lifeline service category, however, is evident in the 

consumer adoption of wireless Lifeline service.  Wireless companies, such as Cricket 

Communications, I-Wireless, Tracfone Wireless, and Virgin Mobile actively promote wireless Lifeline service.  In the relatively short span of five years, wireless Lifeline subscriptions have ballooned from just a few thousand, to over 1 million.  The level of wireless Lifeline subscriptions in 2013 has surpassed even the peak wireline subscriptions of the mid-1990s. 

page 31:

Transitional Issues 

Copper Retirement and Replacement 

Although fiber technology has been used for decades in traditional telephone networks, 

for interoffice transport and to serve digital loop carrier systems, the deployment of fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) is a relatively new development in the long history of telephony.  Most all of the Frontier network in New York State remains copper-based.  While Frontier’s telephone (voice) service quality has not been an issue, the company’s ability to provide modern high-speed Internet (data) service on a going-forward basis will become more and more limited without an assertive fiber build-out schedule.  

 

The mass migration of customers to alternative communications modes over the last 

decade, and the resulting reduction of access lines and associated revenue, has strained the 

business case for narrow band legacy copper networks whose copper plant has contributed to declining service quality performance in some instances.  Aging copper plant is an issue in both urban areas of New York, where Verizon’s fiber technology may run parallel to copper, as well as rural areas, where fiber deployment is less prevalent.   

Except for the few areas where it has provided notification of copper facility retirement, 

Verizon still maintains its copper network, even in areas where FiOS is broadly deployed.  

Pursuant to its franchise with New York City, Verizon committed to a complete build-out of FiOS for video service by June 2014.  However, the Commission is aware that in some 

neighborhoods and many buildings in NYC, FiOS is not readily available to customers for 

various reasons.  In many areas of New York City, the legacy copper infrastructure is in such poor condition that copper failures due to weather conditions can cause long delays for service restoration and Commission service quality standards are missed.  To keep customers connected, the company offers Voice Link as a permanent service or as an interim solution until copper can be repaired.  In many instances, the migration to FiOS may not be readily available so the company faces a difficult repair or lengthy replacement of the copper facility to serve a reduced customer base.    

page 33:

The challenges of the NYC FiOS build and the Fire Island experience illustrates many of 

the difficulties faced by companies and communities related to the retirement and replacement of copper-based TDM networks and the transition to IP, FTTP and wireless networks.  There is a general concern in areas solely served by copper networks that repairs are not unduly delayed as carriers transition to other technologies.  The PSC must also ensure that copper retirements are not being accelerated as an artificial means to degrade competition, raise consumer prices or otherwise reduce consumer protections. 

page 54:

 Mobile wireless broadband, while not necessarily a full substitute for wired broadband, is available to nearly all households, whether or not a wired broadband service is available.  Fixed point-to-point wireless is a nascent service beginning to be offered to some rural customers and according to Appendix C reaches approximately 12% of the New York State census blocks. 

pages 55-56:

The state’s mobile (cellular) wireless broadband system has expanded tremendously in 

the last few years, and consumers are subscribing to wireless broadband faster than any other mode available to them.  The deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE, or 4G) service throughout most of the state by companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, has raised the broadband bar.  Consumers can now subscribe to mobile (cellular) wireless data plans from a variety of providers with download speeds in excess of 50 Mbps with the additional ability to take this service with them, just as with mobile voice service.  Additional wireless spectrum, recently auctioned by the FCC to 15 winning bidders providing service in New York, should significantly add to existing capacity and allow further expansion of wireless broadband services and enhanced competition.  Nationally, the FCC’s AWS-3 auction raised nearly $45 billion, of which $6.8 billion, or 15.1% of the total bid revenues, were for wireless spectrum licenses in New York State market areas. 

 

As more consumers adopt wireless services for their voice, data, and video needs, 

companies are expanding their service coverage and broadband speeds to meet consumer 

demand (as noted in the video section of this report, while functionally capable of providing video services, wireless broadband connections are not currently a viable option for most households’ video needs and may include significant data caps at present).  Table 13 depicts the aggregate number of wireless broadband connections in service between 2009 and 2013.  The accompanying Figure 14 map shows the LTE broadband service coverage of the four national  wireless carriers as of April 2014.  Over the last two years, LTE broadband coverage has expanded significantly, providing subscribers with access to faster data speeds from more providers than ever before.  The significant growth of wireless broadband connections over the past few years is reflective of the expanded service coverage of wireless broadband networks over that same time period. 

 

Table 13: Mobile Wireless Broadband Connections 

2009-3,643,000                                                

2010-5,455,000

2011-9,301,000

2012-11,084,000

2013-12,275,000

page 68:

As reflected in Appendix A, the extent of the Commission’s authority or jurisdiction over 

broadband services is limited and at present, not fully defined.  While the Commission has a duty under the Federal law to encourage the deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure, it cannot price regulate or restrict entry of broadband networks.  At the same time, however, the Commission does have some authority over the networks that provide broadband through its authority over telephone and cable providers: most notably, in 2014, the Commission’s authority over cable mergers and transfers was strengthened to require that an applicant make a showing that a given transaction is in the public interest.  In its comments to the Commission in Case 14-M-0183, related to the Comcast Merger, Staff recognized that the Commission has a core interest in ensuring broadband access and affordability for all New Yorkers and stated that any review of a cable merger must include an analysis of a transaction’s impacts on broadband service.  

Staff advocated that, among other things, the Commission should examine customer 

service, and, consistent with the statewide push toward universal 100 Mbps service, Staff 

argued that faster broadband service should be made available to a larger segment of New 

York’s consumers as the result of any cable merger through investments in the system to address physical access limitations and through commitments to address the digital divide. 

APPENDIX A: High Level Overview of  

Public Service Law Jurisdiction & Commission Core Interests