In accordance with AT&T’s software, the corporate has to finish the Section 214 discontinuance process run by the Federal Communications Fee as a way to absolutely discontinue service in any given space.
CPUC says in a summary of the situation that “AT&T is the designated COLR in lots of components of the state and is the most important COLR in California.” This implies “the corporate should present conventional landline phone service to any potential buyer in that service territory. AT&T is proposing to withdraw because the COLR in your space with out a new service being designated as a COLR.”
“If AT&T’s proposal have been accepted as set forth in its software, then no COLR could be required to supply fundamental service in your space,” the state company stated. “This doesn’t essentially imply that no carriers would, in truth, present service in your space—solely that they’d not be required to take action. Different outcomes are potential, reminiscent of one other service moreover AT&T volunteering to change into the COLR in your space, or the CPUC denying AT&T’s proposal.”
AT&T Was Deregulated in Many States
There are 21 states in AT&T’s wireline service territory. AT&T’s California software stated it has already acquired no less than some aid from carrier-of-last-resort obligations within the different 20 states, specifically Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Along with its COLR software, AT&T has requested California to let it quit its designation as an Eligible Telecommunications Service (ETC). The ETC designation permits AT&T to obtain cash from the US authorities’s Common Service Fund, together with the federal Lifeline program. AT&T would nonetheless be eligible for California’s state Lifeline program.
“By relinquishing its ETC designation, AT&T will now not be eligible to obtain federal help to supply Lifeline, which may probably have an effect on all present AT&T Lifeline prospects… For a family receiving federal Lifeline from AT&T, the invoice may improve by $5.25 monthly for voice-only service, or $9.25 monthly for bundled or Web service,” the CPUC stated. “Along with these quantities, a family on Tribal lands receiving federal Lifeline from AT&T may expertise a further $25 monthly invoice improve.”
AT&T Complains That It Has to Preserve Two Networks
To get its software accredited, “AT&T should reveal that one other ETC supplier can present common help within the areas the place AT&T needs to give up its ETC designation,” the CPUC stated.
AT&T argued in its software that it’s looking for solely “modest regulatory reforms” to supply “tailor-made aid from its outdated COLR obligation.” The COLR obligation requires AT&T “to wastefully function and keep two duplicative networks: one, an antiquated, narrowband community with an ever-dwindling base of subscribers, and the opposite, a forward-looking, fiber and wi-fi broadband community,” the corporate stated.
AT&T complained that Comcast, Constitution, Cox, Verizon, and T-Cell don’t face the identical obligation. Due to the COLR requirement, “AT&T California alone should proceed to satisfy each request to increase an outdated voice-centric community to anybody, wherever inside its footprint, even in circumstances the place the shopper has entry to a contemporary various,” AT&T stated.
