Assembly Standing Committee on Communications and Conveyance

Thank you, everyone who's joining us for today's Communication Conveyance Committee hearing on Carrier of Last Resort. My name is Tasha Boerner and I serve as the Chair of this Committee. Joining me at the dais today are Assembly Member Chris Rogers, Assembly Member Mia Bonta, Assembly Member Jessica Caloza, and Assembly Member Robert Garcia. Thank you so much.

We're also being joined today by Emilio Perez, the Chief Consultant of the Communications Committee, and Daniel Billings of the Republican Party, Consultant. Before we begin our presentation, I'd like to take care of some logistical housekeeping.

As we proceed with witnesses and public comment, I want to make sure that everyone understands the Assembly has rules to ensure that we maintain order and run an efficient and fair hearing. We apply these rules consistently to all people who participate in our proceedings, regardless of the viewpoints they express.

We seek to protect the rights of all who participate in the legislative process so that we can have an effective deliberation and decisions on the critical issues facing California. You can exit the hearing room once you've done, you're done testifying or return to your seat. Now, let's cover the ground rules for appropriate conduct.

The Assembly has experienced a number of disruptions to Committee and floor proceedings in the last few years. As you came into the room, hearing room today, the Sergeants directed your attention to the rules for public attendance and participation, which were posted on the door, outside the door.

In order to facilitate the goal of hearing as much as from the public within the limits of our time, we will not predict, permit conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of legislative proceedings. We will not accept disruptive behavior or behavior that incites or threatens violence. The rules for today's hearing include no talking or loud noises from the audience.

Public comment may be provided only at the designated time and place as permitted by the Chair. That's me. And public comment must relate to the subject being discussed today. No engaging in conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the hearing.

Please be aware that violations of these rules may be subject to you, subject you to removal or other enforcement actions. So thank you all for your cooperation on the housekeeping items. Now we can transition to the substantive portion of today's informational hearing on Carrier of Last Resort, or COLR.

The purpose of today's hearing is to provide an opportunity for Members and the public to gain a better understanding of what COLR has been historically, how it operates in the market today, and also understands what it means for the future.

Last year, when AT&T filed an application before the Public Utilities Commission seeking targeted relief of its COLR obligations in the state, it garnered a lot of public attention and concern. The takeaway from the public seemed to be that AT&T was proposing to take away people's landlines.

To be fair, the actual proposal is much more nuanced than that. However, as legislators, we have to be responsive to the concerns and fears of our constituents. I personally heard from constituents who were concerned about the public safety implications of changes to COLR, especially during disasters and wildfires.

I know that other groups are concerned about affordability and ensuring the state remains and ensuring the state remains committed to upholding our universal service goals that have existed for decades. There are also stakeholders who believe COLR reform is a necessary part of expanding access to modern high speed Internet and telecommunications services.

While every stakeholder will have their perspective, I believe the best way to start this nuanced policy conversation is with education about the topic and develop an understanding of the facts. While we will hear from witnesses today who will share their opinions on reform, the first panelists and most of this hearing is intended to give Members and the public an objective understanding of the facts.

I believe developing this grounded understanding as a Committee will help Members make more informed choices about the changes in the future, if we so choose. This conversation is especially timely as we have heard in almost every bill and oversight hearing about the challenges for consumers to access reliable telecommunications and broadband service.

We know that thousands of California families, especially in rural and low income areas, lack access to high speed Internet. We also know that in areas with robust competition between providers, consumer preferences are changing. Today, less people, fewer people than ever have a landline telephone, yet more people than ever have cell phones and home broadband.

Even with home broadband services, consumers are cutting the cord with landline broadband connections at home and migrating to lower cost fixed wireless home Internet. As legislators, it's our job to reflect on how the public policies of the past affect the market and consider whether new policies might better serve the public interest.

My intention is that today's witnesses will help us develop a better understanding. First, we'll start off with a presentation from a nonpartisan expert witness with decades of national experience in the telecommunications sector who is well versed in the legal and regulatory history of COLR.

We'll then turn to the California Public Utilities Commission, whose staff will provide an update on the ongoing regulatory proceeding that is looking into COLR, and we'll finish off the conversation with stakeholder groups to hear their perspectives on reform. And so with that, I would like to turn it over to any of my Members who would like to make a comment before we begin. No? Lots of learning. Okay, thank you. At this point, I'd like to invite our first witness, who is joining us virtually from Washington, D.C.

Thank you, Chair Boerner. It's pleasure to join you all today to hopefully provide some clarity on exactly what is COLR, how have other states dealt with COLR, and what is it that we can understand from the history about where COLR might be going.

I am with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, but my presentation today is obviously based on my own opinions and the research that I've done on COLR across the country. I'll try to be fairly short because I'm sure you all will have a number of questions. So where did COLR come from?

Let's go way back in history. I can put on my former college professor hat and talk about what we saw in the English Common Law. When someone needed to move bales of hay from one town to another, they had to find a carrier to do that. And in order to make sure that a carrier was always available, the concept of carrier of last resort and the requirement that equal access provided to everyone was born. Now, how does that transfer into telecom?

Well, it starts out with the idea that we want to be able to have everyone able to communicate, what we call universal service. And back in the beginning, in 1913, AT&T proposed an idea to the Department of Justice called the Kingsbury Commitment.

And they said, look, if you let us be a carrier across the country, we will provide universal service at equivalent prices, equivalent work, with equivalent abilities to everyone involved. And, you know, that was a pretty good deal, and AT&T got monopoly status and the ability to carry telecom traffic across the country.

In 1934, we had the first Telecommunications Act. And the Telecommunications Act of 1934 was very clear in what it was that the country wanted to provide, a nationwide regulated telecommunications network available to all the people of the United States without discrimination and to provide rapid worldwide wire and radio telecommunications services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.

So the act provided universal service, and the act said we need equivalent service for each person who need service, and we want to make sure that we can provide telecommunications everywhere. This came shortly after we began to see electrification across the country. Business services supported residential services.

We only had one kind of service, and we wanted to make sure that everyone was able to communicate with everyone else. Universal service includes interconnection with what we call today the public switched network and it lets everyone make phone calls to every location. In 1996, Congress amended the act, the 1934 act, and we call it TA 96. Now, what, nearly 30 years later. And TA96 had the idea that telecommunications was going to change. There was going to be competition, new services.

And so the act prescribed the ability to make sure that, as we began to see this new competitive environment, that everyone was able to get service. And that's where we get the idea of carrier of last resort. The idea was, as communications is growing, as we begin to transition to a new... Somebody needs to be a backstop.

That carrier needs to be able to provide service to anyone who asks for it. Now, this is in the time when we're also getting competition. And so there are other carriers coming into the market. We have no more direct subsidies for service and instead we have our Universal Service Fund.

So what does a carrier of last resort do? A carrier of last resort provides basic local telephone service. We refer to that as dial tone in most cases, although I know there are a lot of you in the audience who probably never even heard dial tone.

But it is connectivity that lets me take whatever device I've got, my cell phone, my computer, and communicate with all the endpoints on the public switched network. Now, as the basic local service provided by the COLR was defined, dial tone, the ability to dial 911 and get emergency services, interconnection with the network, and back in the day, a listing in the phone book. I know we don't have those too much anymore, although I miss mine. And a certain set of service quality that meant that you could always reach the services you were trying to get.

So you had the competitive carriers entering the world, and they were doing it in various ways, either reselling service from the incumbent carrier or creating their own network and eventually beginning to see Internet based traffic. The duty to provide this backstop, this backstop was assigned to the incumbent carrier.

And in our vernacular in the telecom world, we mean the carrier that was there providing wireline service when the act was initiated. And so each state had their own incumbent carrier and decided what, how that carrier should act as a carrier of last resort.

One of the important things to remember about telecommunications is that we have cooperative federalism. So the FCC can prescribe what happens in interstate telecom, but the state is responsible for intrastate telecom and we work together to make sure that service is available.

By the time we got to the act, we had somewhere between 97 and 99% of folks had phone service, which was a faster growth actually, than we saw in electricity. Now, these carrier of last resort rules are technology neutral. And as I said, each state developed their own plan for how they would address these rules.

So some of the states didn't even have carrier of last resort requirements. Nine states. 16 states had very specific requirements, either in statute or promulgated by the state Public Utility Commission. California being one of those.

Of the nine states, you had states like Florida, who in 2010 said, nope, don't need any of this, moving right along, and completely deregulated everything. Nine states had what I call implicit requirements. They put a requirement on their carriers to say, you do need to serve everyone.

And the real issue for COLR was if I call you up, the company, and say I want service, it needs to be provided. Even back in the day, if you had to extend a landline. Now, they were allowed to charge for that if it was over a certain distance, but it was always providing service.

And 15 states had limited requirements. That is, you had to prove that you really did need service. COLR was only required in rural areas, not in the big cities. Missouri is a good example of that. Missouri had a COLR requirement, but that requirement didn't apply in St. Louis and the other large cities.

But it did apply where there was less competition. Now, the majority of states, 38 of them, created a pathway to move from COLR in the traditional sense to a fully competitive environment. So I like to think of the 96 act as a roadmap to the future, and we're probably close to being there.

So what did these 38 states do, and how will it help you think about the way in which you should begin to look at regulation going forward? Some of the states created alternative regulation methodologies. For instance, Georgia in 2012.

All the rest of the BellSouth states said, if you agree to a different form of regulation where we no longer guarantee you a rate of return, then you can be a competitive carrier and you need not offer COLR services. These states also created a backstop, if you will.

They said, you don't have to be the COLR anymore, but you can't leave. So it's very important to remember that carrier of last resort is about providing new service in areas where you currently might need to extend your service. It doesn't mean walking away. And so I think that's a really important thing to remember.

Now, other states looked at the question of competition, and we use a word that is effective competition. What makes competition something that really works? And the states have all looked at this in different ways. I like to think about Colorado.

Colorado looked at each of its central offices, those main switching areas for their telecom services, and said, how many carriers, at least three. Do you need to have universal service support? Or are there enough customers that you don't need someone to help you make your money? And what kind of carriers are they?

So Colorado did a study and they decided, effective in 2016, that there was no more need for this high cost support and there was no need for a COLR requirement. Now 25 states have a path, most of which is similar to Colorado's. How many competitors, how many lines does the existing company have? Will you grandfather, that is, will you say to people who already have service, we're not going to be the carrier of last resort anymore, but you get to stay here? You just can't add a new line.

And these carriers, the majority of which were what we call eligible telecommunications carriers, or ETCs, were able to continue that designation. So they still had commission oversight. Now a number of these states decided there also should be a way for customers to respond. And I like to call it the test drive.

So I move to a different kind of service. And again, remember COLR and competitive services can use any technology. So I move to tin cans and string, and I get to test that out. And I can go to the state commission and say, I'm really sorry, but this doesn't work for me.

It doesn't meet the basic requirements of basic local service. At the same time, consumers in a number of states can petition the state commission to say, I know you say there's competition, but I would like you to open a proceeding because I going to prove that there aren't enough carriers who can really support me.

So in the aggregate we have universal service, the need to keep universal service, and the question of whether a competitive market is something that no longer needs a carrier of last resort because there are enough carriers that I have a choice. That is a decision for you all. I think there are a number of questions that you want to think about as you begin to address this issue. First of all, you want to know whether your current COLR requirement serves your needs or do you need something...

Uh oh, I don't know what to do. Excuse me. We needed her to finish. Okay, we're gonna get her back. We'll get her back. It's fine. She's like, she's... You missed it. We started out with English Common Law, moving bales of hate. Whatever she started with, like COLR, the carrier last resorts comes from English Common Law and the need to move bales of hay. I was like...

Well, that's a cliffhanger. We're going to wait for Dr. Lichtenberg to come back, so one second, if everybody can be patient. Thank you.

She's back. Dr. Lichtenberg, you left us on a cliffhanger. We can't hear you. Hold on.

Try again. I'm here. Are you all there?

That was my technical error that time, so go ahead. Dr. Lichtenberg.

How long have I been talking into the void?

No, I think we left at. Does current COLA. Do current COLA requirements serve the needs of the state?

So that is the set of questions I think that you all need to.

We only got the first question. We only got the first question. Does, do current COLA requirements serve the needs of the state? That was the first question that we got. And we did give you lots of compliments while we didn't have you on screen. You're doing a great job. We were very informative.

Thank you very much. The next question is what should the CLOA be required to offer? And tell me that you can still hear me because I've lost your video.

Yes. Okay. Sorry about that. I don't know who's doing the video, but we can still hear you.

Do you need to redefine COLA? Do you need to end it and start anew? Or do you have enough competition and enough oversight? And the California rules do provide oversight to ensure that that competition stays. Remember, we've had competition now for about 30 years, so I think it might stay for a while.

The really critical question is, how should competition be measured? What does it mean to be fully competitive? What does it mean to be able to provide service to everyone? And then if you drop COLA, what does that mean for all of your citizens? Given the competitive landscape, what does it mean? Is it necessary anymore?

So I'm going to leave that decision up to you, and I would be more than happy to answer some questions if you have it.

Yes. Thank you. That was an excellent presentation, an excellent summary. I can't believe we started with British common law and hay bales. Never thought I would say those words in the Legislature. Maybe Josh Hoover did, but you know, I didn't. But before I come up with some questions, I'll open up for the Committee. No questions. No questions.

Okay. I have some questions. Dr. Lichtenberg, in your research paper, you can you conclude that COLA service is not an anachronism but a living regulatory compact that must be evaluated and modified on an ongoing basis? Have you learned any best practices from other states regarding their approaches to evaluating or modifying their state's COLA requirements?

I appreciate that you have read the paper. I read it yesterday just to make sure I remembered what it said. I think the best practices are states like Colorado that looked at location by location, if you will, that is major cities and outlying places.

I think the idea of the test drive and Kentucky did, this is a good one. That is go, you can try a different carrier and if it doesn't work for you, let's take a look at that and decide how we move forward.

So I and I think one of the things that I have always been in favor of and I did spend a lot of time with the California Commission doing this back at the time of the Telecom Act is collaboration. I think working together to really come up with an answer is also a best practice.

I hope that answers your question very succinctly.

Thank you. My Vice Chair, Josh Hoover is now back. Thank you for joining us today. Did you have any questions for her.

Thanks so much. And you know, I think my only question right now is just in terms of affordability and cost effectiveness, you know, how can we make this transition in a cost efficient manner? And what are your thoughts on that issue?

So one of the precepts of the Telecom act, both 1934 and as in amended in 96, is that we provide the same level of affordability regardless of where you are. I think the idea of competition was to drive prices down. As a Legislature, you might be able to craft some affordability standards.

I have never looked at the California pricing or I haven't looked at that since somewhere in the distant past. So I think that is something you could work with the Commission and with the stakeholders to look at.

I know you have a very robust lifeline program and I think that is very helpful in terms of looking at portability.

Thank you. Any other questions before I ask another question? Okay. Discontinuance of service and cholera requirements is a dual federal and state regulatory process. Can you talk to us more about the federal process that carriers have to go through to be granted COLA relief from the FCC?

And although the FCC has a process, so might not be an effective backstop for consumer protection given the current Administration and the State of California. So you could comment on the 1st and if you feel up for it, you can comment on the 2nd.

I live in Washington, D.C. I'm always commenting on the 2nd. The section 271 of the Telecommunications act is a very interesting section because it talks about adding and removing circuits in the same sentence. The FCC requires that a carrier seek approval to drop service. Now that is separate. It's not the same as dropping COLA requirements.

It is actually removing service. When a carrier asks for that, the Commission opens a proceeding and there can be commentary. In addition, the Commission has to the Federal Communications Commission has to notify the Department of Justice The Department of Defense and the state Governor. And that gives you the opportunity to comment.

In addition, if you your carriers are what we call eligible telecommunications carriers, you have some additional oversight there. No one has completely left a state yet and I'll say yet, because who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Different kinds of services have been. Have come and gone in some states.

There have been requests to discontinue specific services you had. For instance, in California, my old company MCI got purchased by Verizon and stopped offering service. You have in California a robust program process that I helped write to notify customers, find new carriers.

So I think you have protections and I would love to know what the FCC is going to do. But at this point I have no answer to that question.

Thank you, Dr. Lichtenberg, for all your answers and for participating today remotely. Despite our technical glitch, I thought it was really informative and I think all my panelists did too. So thank you. With that, we're gonna move on to the. Any final comment before we move on to the next panel? Oh, did you have a question?

Yeah, sorry.

I'm sorry because I had to leave and I just wanna make sure I understand this. First of all, your presentation was excellent. So let me understand this. So no one can pull out a services whether you're COLA or not without going to the FCC. Is that correct?

That is absolutely correct. You have to file an application. The application is reviewed at the FCC. They seek comment and move forward one way or the other so they can. Tell you that you can't leave. Is that true? That is is quite possible. They can deny that application. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you all. I am.

I'll turn off my calendar and mute. And I guess that means I can watch the rest. Please feel free to reach out anytime. I love to talk about this Stop as perhaps you can tell. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Dr. Lichtenberg. We do appreciate your passion and giving us the history of it. I think even for someone like myself, I learned something new today. So I appreciate that. And with that we're going to continue to Panel two, an update on the CPUC rulemaking and process. CPUC representatives can please approach the dais.

The slide presentation of the CPUC is also available on our website for those watching remotely. And today we have the following staff from the CPUC joining us. We have Anna Maria Johnson, Deputy Executive for Broadband and Communications. Robert Osborne, Director of Communications Division. Thank you for being here. And you may begin.

Thank you. Give me one second. Okay. Good afternoon, Chair Boerner, Vice Chair Hoover and Committee Members. I'm Anna Maria Johnson, Deputy Executive Director for Broadband and Communication. And with me today is Rob Osborne, Director of Broadband Consumer Programs and Carrier Oversight at the CPUC.

I do want to start up front that our statements presented here do not reflect the views or perspective of any of the five commissioners or the respective offices at the CPUC. The information we are presenting here today is from CPUC staff in the Communications Division. Trying to move to the next slide.

Thank you. Today we will cover three main segments that we hope is going to be very informative for you. We will begin with the principles of universal service in California and what it means to be a carrier of last resort, also known as COLR. You're going to hear me use both terms interchangeably.

We will then follow with an overview of the 2023 application from AT&T requesting the CPUC to relinquish its COLR obligations. And we will conclude with an overview of the CPUC's current holistic overview of COLR requirements. I think I went too far. Okay, so Californians commitment to universal service started back in the 1980s.

And in 1994, through Assembly Bill 3643, the Legislature affirms its intent to ensure widespread availability of high quality communication services for all Californians. So universal service provider principles is made up of three main pillars, access, reliability and quality and affordability. And all these pillars are current commitments that are now codified as part of the Public Utilities Code.

In other words, universal service is the principle of ensuring that no Californian is left behind from receiving essential communication service.

COLR obligations are an important part of achieving universal service because it provides a guarantee to all customers in the service territory of a COLR company that they can obtain access to what is called basic service when they request it.

Next slide, please.

In 1996 and confirmed in 2012, the CPUC adopted carrier last resource obligations that ensured this universal service principle that no customer is left behind and whoever wants to subscribe to basic service can do so and receive it. Today, California has 16 carrier last resort companies that cover the whole state.

AT&T is the largest caller with the vast majority of California. And you can see that's the golden shaded area on the map and it's followed by Frontier that is composed of a number of different companies. So the light blue and the yellowish and the dark purple combined At&t and Frontier cover the vast majority of the state.

We do have other companies, consolidated communication, and third, 13 small rural telephone companies that cover the remaining part of California.

Next slide. Next slide, please.

As I mentioned earlier, a caller is an obligation to serve any customer that requests basic service. So you may be wondering, well, what is basic service? The CPUC last updated the definition of basic service in 2012, and it includes nine core elements that address reliability, quality, public safety and affordability.

Some of those core elements include the requirement for a customer to be able to receive and place voice grade calls, access to 911, access to telephone relay service for people with disabilities and the requirements requirement to offer all customers within the service territory, Lifeline Service, which is the Low income eligible program in the state that provides a discount for your phone service.

Callers are also required to comply with service quality standards and may use any technology to satisfy its obligation to provide basic service.

So in other words, COLR obligations to provide basic service is technology neutral and can be delivered over fiber, wireless, copper now that we have gone through the baseline definitions of what constitutes a COLR, I will turn it over to Director Rob Osborne, who will cover the remaining topics of our presentation.

Thank you. So AT&T filed an application to be relieved of their carrier of last resort obligations in nearly all of their designated COLR territory. The application requested two things.

First was relief from the COLR obligations and census blocks with a demonstrated voice alternative, which was rough more than 99% of their territory and then second, an opportunity to opt out of carrier of last resort in remaining census blocks via a tier one advice letter.

Once there's a demonstrated voice alternative, AT&T said it would continue service for at least six months following approval and would be subject to the FCC's discontinuance process. So the Commission adopted its COLR rules in 1996, stressing that the COLR concept is important to universal service policy because it ensures that customers receive service.

And when we say service, we're talking basic service, which has nine elements. So it's not just voice, it's access to 911, access to relay service, access to directory assistance, and access to Lifeline. No other COLR serves AT&T service territory, and no potential COLR applied to replace AT and T during this open proceeding.

In the eight public participation hearings in Clovis and Mendocino and Indio and Remote, we heard from more than 2000 people who there were more than 2000 participants with over about 400 of whom provided comments during the public participation hearings. We also received over 5,000 public comments in the docket for the proceeding.

Just to share a couple anecdotes from the public participation hearings. They really underscore the importance of access to basic service, not just to voice service. So the one of them is Russ Peterson in Kern County. He says, we live down in Kern county, about 30 miles northeast of Bakersfield, a very rural area.

No cell phone service, which is the important thing for EMS purposes. Coincidentally, Sunday at about 1pm our landline went down. We're still waiting for it to come up. They said it might come up By Thursday at 10:00pm Second one Joan Caulfield, Fresno County I live in cattle country up by Watts Valley Road. Acres and acres. I'm alone.

Last year I had a stroke. The landline saved my life. How did it save my life? Cell phone service doesn't work. To use the cell phone service at my house, you have to go down my driveway half a mile, about a half mile out on Watts Valley Road. Then you get cell service.

I also have Clear Captions I'm hard of hearing. Clear Captions works through my landline. Finally, Carolyn Wong of Tulare County, I called the Police Department before I came here and I asked them fairly. I said, in case of an emergency, a 911 call, which call do you receive faster, the landline or the cell phone line?

He said, even though the cell phone lines have improved the landline, I have a direct contact and I can pinpoint exactly where you're at. So that's just some of the things that we heard during the public participation hearings.

So the decision identified that a new rulemaking was necessary to consider holistically with regard to the ensuring the state's commitment to providing universal service, whether to revise the COLR rules. Which brings us to the next slide.

So the new rulemaking is considering whether to update the COLR rules, given the age of the COLR rules again 1996, and understanding whether the basic service definition, which was Last updated in 2012, needs to be updated. As I said earlier, the basic service includes nine elements.

Some of those may not be necessary anymore, and that's part of why we have this open rulemaking. We also the proceeding will consider what communication needs or activities still require COLR service, consider what conditions, if any, would allow COLR withdrawal in defined service areas or under specific circumstances.

Additional questions include should the Commission De designate certain areas that are currently in COLR service territory from requiring a COLR, and under what conditions could that be done? Also, what should the customer notification requirements be for COLR withdrawal? And then finally, what should the customer transition period be for COLR withdrawal, if there is one?

So the new proceeding that's open right now with regard to the schedule and input opportunities. So parties submitted initial proposals and reply comments in late 2024. A scoping ruling was issued in February 5 this year.

Public participation hearings are scheduled between April and May, and these are where the CPC hears directly from the public on the concerns they may have. That will be a mix of in person and remote hearings, just like we did for the AT&T application. I'll get into that in a moment. And then we're also planning. We're planning three workshops, two that are in person, one that that is remote. And I'll get into that in a moment.

Staff proposal is we're planning to have that ready in the third quarter of this year with a proposed decision anticipated later this year or into mid-2026, depending on how the proceeding goes with regard to the three workshops. So the first one is scheduled for April 4th at the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians. That's in Lake County.

We're planning to have a tribal panel to hear from tribes, a public safety panel, a panel to hear from officials from rural counties about their experience and also hear from other states. What's their experience with Kohler.

The second workshop is planned in Los Angeles at our CPC office that will be in person and we intend to hear from carriers and advocates, consumer advocates, that will be in person only. Then the third one is going to be fully remote via video conference. And. And that workshop will focus on the COLR ecosystem.

So what companies depend on having a telephone line, what other accessibility manufacturers require to have telephone service, and what sort of technology can be supported in the future to support those services. So next, this is the COLR webpage that we have and that's updated regularly and we'll be updating as the rulemaking proceeds.

We have eight dates for the public participation hearings with 14 planned hearings. So some dates have two hearings. They're planned for San Diego, Los Angeles, Kern, County, Placer county and Sonoma county with additional remote events. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I'd like to open up to the Committee Members before I start my long list of questions so I can go ahead and open it up to you guys for questions. Yeah, Assemblymember Bonta.

Start out with a couple and then defer. I'm just looking at the public participation hearings. It was the last that you. That you had. These are Southern California, Central Valley and kind of far north Northern California. I represent Oakland Alameda in Emeryville. Is there an intention to have public hearings in that area?

I can certainly take that back and suggest it to the Commissioner.

Yes, I did want to add that we will have the opportunity for remote hearings as well. There will be three that are available.

So while not physically present in that geographic area, everyone across the state will have an opportunity to be heard as part of this proceeding through the remote hearings that will become available and customers notified to attend.

Which is always very ironic to me when you're talking about digital access. So if you are planning to go to these other areas, I'd Hope that you'd at least hit some of the Bay Area proper areas as well. Yeah.

So why did you leave out the Bay Area? Because that seems like a large omission. You're going to Vista in San Diego County and not the Bay Area, which has a lot of people. So was there a logic in omitting the Bay Area as a whole?

I wouldn't call it as omitting the Bay Area, really. The geographic areas that have been identified is a matter of where facilities number one, are available, where we can target a lot of customers that are part of the service territory.

And we know it's statewide, but in the more urban areas there's an opportunity to be heard remotely as well. But we can definitely look for an opportunity to explore a bit more. We were looking at kind of the South Bay a bit to understand kind of the geographic locations.

But we also have to take into account the drive and location from people. And given the just number of workshops of public participations that we have, we do have to account where to make that particular selection.

I understand. I just say this is hard to get to if you're in San Diego. It's not easy. There's. It's not really served by transit. And there are lots of places in the Bay Area that make it easy for people to get to, especially if they have physical limitations, unlike Vista.

So I love Vista, used to represent Vista. I'm glad you're going there. And also there are other people in the state who might have the same feeling as people in Vista might feel.

I want to just relate back the conversation that we heard from the first, from their first panelist, Dr. Lichtenberg, and the commentary that you offered around this concept of technology neutrality. I think it plays into this notion of basic service.

So under your kind of review that you'll doing, we know that technology neutrality is fiber, wireless or copper. There's also this concept around what constitutes basic service and basic coverage.

I see that in your last slide you indicated that, or at least in AT&T's application there was an assertion that there should be relief from the Kohler obligation because 99% of the territory has demonstrated voice alternative. And there was a specific definition. I think I'm looking at your slides.

As defined as wireless within more than 50% coverage of the census block. Availability of voice over VOIP and other wireline carriers. At the heart of what we've often been talking about is what constitutes adequacy and service. I'm wondering if you can comment both on the idea of Technology neutrality and whether we actually have demonstrated voice alternative.

Using those modalities, that's an excellent question and that's definitely something that continues to be explored during the current open rulemaking. But what we ourselves as staff have definitely seen well before I provide those numbers going back to basic service. So a carrier last resort is an obligation to offer basic service.

And those components, as we mentioned, are the voice grade, our access to 911, our participation in the Lifeline program, relay services for people with disabilities. So when we look at alternatives, we have to be aware and ensure that a company is able to deliver that basic service.

Those elements and components, as we look at the statistics state across, we know that there are areas that don't have voice grade coverage from alternative types of technologies, such as wireless. So the level of coverage by technology continues to be explored, continues to be looked into.

This particular rulemaking, the rulemaking has questions related as to what constitutes basic service. Are the elements that we have been presenting to you today continue to be important to California and should there be other elements that should be incorporated as well? So all of that are items that we continue to look into, including the number of providers.

So for example, across our 58 counties in California, if you look at broadband, for example, example, offering 100Mbps, what we have been able to see is that nine counties of the 58 counties really have two providers that are able to offer at that higher level speed.

So it's really important to get down to what the community is currently able to receive as far as coverage as part of services. Does it meet some of those basic service component and what the true customer choice are available to them to then be able to assess what those obligations will look like.

One of the things that also just relating to the first panel, it was really helpful to have the history in context. My nuts and bolts version of it is there was the existence of a monopoly. I had the ability to go to The San Francisco AT&T offices a long, long time ago.

And as a result of that, a commitment and responsibility taken on to essentially be the universal carrier, carrier of last resort. With the introduction of the level of competition that we do have now across multiple types of services, landline, wireless, broadband, to name the big three. What kind of impact does that?

Well, I would say what responsibility are we still assigning to the carrier and how much of that is vested in this original agreement that was made when the monopoly in theory doesn't exist anymore.

So the obligation to serve works as a safety net for any customer that is present in the service territory of the COLR who wants to receive. And I'm going to go back to the basic service, which are the elements that we have laid out to be able to receive that service if they choose to.

Now, if there's a wireless company already in the area, which we know some of the carriers are already offering wireless service, can they be able to meet the definition of basic service with the wireless? That's something that's available to them. But let's say it was another wireless company that it was not a carrier of last resort.

That company is not currently obligated to serve the customer and meet those basic service elements. So those are questions that the CPUC will have to explore and look into, into what are the safety nets? What are going to be the requirements for companies to offer service to customers? And what are going to be the basic service elements that is meeting the customer needs today?

Do you have a sense that we are assigning an obligation to one particular type of service and essentially one company that we have not required of other types of services?

So the way I'm going to answer that question, Assemblymember Bonta, is the concept of universal service is, as we have heard from the earlier panelists as well, has existed even since 1934 when there was the concept of one monopoly and when the 1996 Telecommunications act, which deregulated the area and opened it up to competitions.

Those core principles remain in place even as competition started to occur in the market. So it's more of a concept of a principle and obligations of having those safety nets for customers again. As we continue to look at where we are right now, we know that communications networks have been upgraded, have been modernized.

Companies, carriers of resort companies have invested in their networks to bring them up to speed, to bring fiber service. The question before us is do we continue to hold those principles of universal service and require that safety net of a provider to be able to be there and deliver what we now call basic service? Or as we shape it to be something else if we want to continue with that paradigm. Thank you.

Thank you. And now we're joined by Assemblymember Josh Hoover, Josh Lowenthal, too many Joshes in my life. And Leticia Castillo. Thank you for being here. You guys missed out on hay bales and how we ever created the carrier of last resort. It was fascinating.

I have two follow up questions to somebody Member Bonta before I open up to other Members of the Committee. One, I think that how'd you arrive at more than 50% of an area served by wireless. Because if you think about it, a carrier of last resort is obligated to serve everyone.

And if you have a wireless service that serves more than 50%, say 60%, that's 40% that could be unserved. Or 30% or 20%. That's not everyone. Right. So why do you come up with more than 50%?

That is not something that CPUC came out. That was the AT&T. That's. What AT&T. But it goes exactly to your point. What happens to the other 50%? How about if 10% don't have it? I'm going to turn it over to Director Osborne if he has anything else to add on that.

No, I don't.

Oh. So I, And then another follow up to Assembly Member Bonta's questions, who love her questions. And let me make sure I got that correct because I think it was said and it's really important. Under carrier of last resort, they're obligated to serve every customer.

If we remove the carrier of last resort obligation, a company that serves that area could choose to serve that customer but is not required to, is not obligated to Basic. For the basic. Right. Like for the basic. I understood you said four times.

That's right.

I got the memo. Four. The four things you know.

But I think that's important for the Committee to differentiate the obligation to serve everyone versus the option to serve a customer. Right. That's. That's what we're really at the crux of it. That's one of the important key facets. Correct?

Correct.

Okay. Other questions. Yeah, go for it.

Have you all mapped the market share like in the same way that you were able to indicate that there were, you know, that AT&T and Frontier had a majority of the percentage. You actually didn't give us an exact percentage. And then you said that there were 13 small rural telephone companies covering the rest of the.

Of the State of California. And there was one other category that I missed. So you clearly have a sensibility of the market share for wireline services. Have you also done an analysis of the market share for broadband and wireless down to the company? And do you have that available for the State of California?

To answer your first item on the map, AT&T covers an estimated 75% of the population. That's around 29 million. Frontier comes right after like 24%. And consolidated and the 13 small legs combined actually make 1% of the population. They are the heavy. AT&T is the vast majority of the provider.

As far as the market Share number of connections the numbers I have provided are based on the Federal Communications Commission 2023 subscriber information for broadband. Now wireless. It's very tricky.

Assemblymember Bonta what we have found with the wireless coverage map that is overestimated coverage is not, does not mean that every address level in the map is guaranteed to be able to obtain that service.

It has been very difficult and it's actually a nationwide agreement that a lot of more work needs to be done to really truly understand the wireless coverage that is available at someone's home.

Even the wireless carriers themselves have been very upfront to say that their wireless coverage map does not necessarily mean that coverage is available all the time to customers or it's available at an address level. We do have information on broadband subscribership that we can share with your office.

But as far as wireless is overstated that I myself don't even feel very comfortable in saying what that true coverage is.

Seems like that might be something that would be helpful to inform our future legislation. And then my last question on slide number six, access to basic service. You indicated that that would be a part of the rulemaking process to understand reliability, safety, basic voice service, affordability.

Have you all had any kinds of conversations around the different weighting of those functions? So I was very taken by the testimony that was brought in where you have somebody calling into a mobile service. Right. And we know that it's very hard to make sure that you can pinpoint accuracy for mobile service for somebody's home.

Landline is 100% correct, wireless not. So have you just given any thought to the relative weighting of these very important functions?

We have not at the moment. It's obviously very. All of these are very critically important. Access to lifeline service, which addresses the affordability and being required to offer a Low income eligible option access to 911. Recent Cal OES statistics show that 1 million calls are still coming from wireline.

So putting a weight on kind of the 911, even though there are diminishing number of landlines occurring in the state, it's really hard because obviously the emergency to one family is very important. And we are still seeing 911 calls, over a million coming from a wireline.

That wireline could be fiber or copper. Right. When you see wireline, you mean in the ground versus cell?

For the 911, VOIP is broken out separately than wireline. For VOIP, 1.6 million of 911 calls. This is for 2024. Statistics are coming from VOIP, which I would I would correlate that more with FIVERR or other types of broadband related specific but for the Wireline it was 1.026 million 911 calls that occur in 2020.

Okay, Any other questions? I have, like, procedural rulemaking questions next. So if you want to stick on the big picture topics, this is your time to ask. This is the CPUC. They're right here. We're usually quite animated in asking questions of the CPUC. Okay, it's a good day for you guys.

So AT&T's initial application was ultimately dismissed for technicality by a proposed decision of an administrative law judge. Quoting from the decision, given that AT&T's application, as amended, does not meet the requirements of the Commission's COLR withdrawal rules, and the existing undisputed facts of this case make it clear that AT&T application is dismissed with prejudice.

From a CPUC perspective, can you help us better understand why the CPUC wouldn't have automatically denied the application when it was filed if it was a technicality? And instead, in the three months between the application, when the application was filed in March 2023 and when the motion dismissed was granted in June 2023, the CPUC still held multiple public meetings across the state and people were genuinely concerned about the impact to their service. And I'm.

So I'm kind of wondering if there's a technicality, if it was going to be dismissed, why did we go and do this whole process and what purpose those meetings served to the public or the applicant if ultimately the answer was always going to be no because they didn't meet the technical requirement.

So. And thank you for that question. And I understand there was several parts of that application, but when it was originally filed, it was filed incomplete. So. And it was one of these cases where there should have been a complete application when it comes in with all the information, in other words, demonstrating with data showing where AT&T should be relieved of its COLR obligations because of the presence of service as an alternate carrier of last resort.

But as we noted earlier, the rules for the COLR application or the COLR obligations are outdated. And just as an example, one of the things that is required is that we have to go out and ask, are there any other companies that want to step up to be a COLR? And we, we solicited companies to see if anyone wanted to do that, and there were none. So that's ultimately why we ended up dismissing the application because there were no other COLRs willing to serve.

So what was the purpose of the public meetings if you were just putting out a request to see if anybody else wanted to be the COLR?

So we went out to see if anyone wanted to be a COLR to as sort of part of the process as dictated in the decision from 1996.

And I may add, just generally, not specifically, just particular to this application. The CPUC process, as part of all our proceedings, is very important to hear from the public what the impact is. So in addition to all the requirements that must be met by companies, that on the ground truth from customers of what it ultimately means is so critical to informing the Commission on what the adverse impacts are or if there are no impacts whatsoever. So in generally, that's an important component in going through the process of hearing input from the public.

My concern around that is if the application wasn't going to meet the requirements and you were just looking for anybody else to be the carrier of last resort, in having the public meetings, I had people who aren't even served by AT&T as carrier of last resort in my district, which is not one of probably the most problematic places in the state when you look at carrier of last resort and being served, being very paranoid about this.

And so I think if there was a technicality going out and seeking that public input when you knew the application couldn't go forward because there wasn't going to be another alternative carrier of last resort caused a lot of public consternation. And when we look at reopening the rulemaking, people already feel like they've... None of, none of that record from the first application will be carried over to this new process.

People feel like they've already said their piece and they're going to be, normal people are going to be coming back and being like, why do I have to go back again and again and again? And I think that creates more chaos than clarity for everyday people who are concerned of having 911 access. Right?

When you talk to people, they don't even care about the technology. They care about having 911 access. They care about for the disability services. They care about maybe Lifeline and the affordability aspect, care about this basic service, which is why we have basic service standards. I think that did.

That may, when we go into the rulemaking, create a little bit of chaos because people feel like they've already said the first time, they're like, why is this back? I don't think people are going to understand. And so when we look at the new rulemaking, after denying the first application in June 2023, a year later, the CPUC has now reopened a separate proceeding as of June 2024 to consider revisions to the regulations that require the application being denied.

So just for the clarity of this Committee, it's my understanding that the applications are actually to go back and look at the 1996 rules and say are these rules still the rules we want to have for carrier of last resort? Right. Not considering a carrier of last resort removal application, but saying do we need to update the 1996 rules, which to your point earlier, I was 23 in 1996, so that was a long time ago.

I've led five lives in that time. So I have some questions around that. Question one, given that the CPUC is actively considering changes to the state's COLR framework, wouldn't now be the most opportune time for the Legislature to weigh in on what we think our our constituents need?

I appreciate that question. We are currently not in a position to be able to comment on legislative matters. We are very transparently committed to moving forward with the rulemaking to look at what the necessary updates are to reflect today's needs of customer, what it means to have basic service, what are some of the obligations, if any, we need to continue to consider. So our focus as CPUC staff is to forward with that proceeding, so I would not be able to comment on on legislative matters.

And so my next question... I appreciate that. You know, I had to ask because maybe it's a rhetorical question too. It's like if you're opening this up and we are considering what should be the rules in 2025 updating from 1996, you know, maybe it's more a question for us of should we be weighing in on what those requirements should be today. So maybe it's a more rhetorical question.

Second one, the scope of the proceedings includes updating basic service requirements and evaluation of what communication needs or activities still require COLR service. In a separate proceeding, the CPUC is also considering service quality standards for broadband. As staff, have the attorneys at CPUC advised you or your staff whether the CPUC would have the authority to include broadband as part of its basic service moving forward?

So I'm going to answer that question focusing on the current rulemaking. We are not in a position to disclose attorney input to us. But what I would say is that the scoping memo for the carrier last resort proceeding did make clear that, given that basic service right now relies on technology such as broadband, broadband is to be considered as part of that rulemaking, and it's not going to be ignored.

That is because a number of services, as we know these networks have been already upgraded and modernized and are running on Internet protocol enabled technologies already. So that's the extent, Chair, that I can go into as to what we're looking. I'm going to turn over to Director Osborn if he has anything to add.

Just to clarify, I wasn't asking for you to break attorney client privilege. I was just asking, have you been advised by your attorneys that it is in your scope to look at broadband?

I can say that service quality proceeding has scoped out broadband in phase two, so that's part of the proceeding. I'm not sure if that answers your question.

Okay, I think we got the memo. So. And question three, would some would argue that wireless voice service is suitable alternative to wireline voice communications. However, there have been, as you've pointed out, inconsistencies with the service quality requirements that the CPUC is considering revisions to. Can you provide on the update on that status of that rulemaking?

Yeah, so we're working on a proposed decision. We hope to have that out probably in early April for service quality.

Assembly Member Bonta. Or McKinnor.

Well, I actually, just, I had kind of the same question that that the Assembly Member had about oversight. Within the PUC's proceeding on COLR, will the Legislature have appropriate oversight over what Californians will be impacted and how that transition would take place?

So the Public Utilities Code is codified and comes from Assembly bills, Senate bills. As the CPUC, we have the responsibility to implement what is statutory code on Public Utilities Code, and that is what we're set to do as part of that rulemaking. I know the CPUC is always open to working with various offices at the Legislature, and I hope I was able to answer that question to you to the best of my ability at the moment.

This may be a question for... Did you have another? May be a question for the last panelist or we could portal back Dr. Lichtenberg. To what extent was in other states, perhaps you might know, to what extent as they were on the pathway to being able to revise COLR was the Legislature involved in establishing the standards essentially or the framework associated with the revision of the pathway versus it being an entirely regulatory proposition?

That's a really excellent question. One of our workshops includes other states to understand what their journey and path has been. I don't have information to share which particular states were driven more by legislation other than I know some of them were. But that is why we're including other states as part of our workshops to really understand their lessons learned, what the impact has been to customers. And it's going to be a diverse number of states, too, to hear from the different perspectives.

Probably and also we'll be able to get some Insights from the next panel on that. I'm having trouble squaring the peg of not having a total response around whether CPUC has the ability to, has scope over application of COLR to broadband specifically, which I think is a version of what our Chair asked and, and whether the Legislature should be providing additional guidance on that.

And the comment that you made about basically at this point not really requiring the obligation of COLR on other modalities outside of the ones that we know take up 95% of the or 99% of the market share right now. So I just like for our consideration, it feels like this all happened because there was a monopoly.

The monopoly no longer exists. We know that there are other competitors with other modalities consuming the market. Broadband, wireless, in addition to wireline. This obligation is being entirely held sounds like on wireline right now. And without having explicit consideration around whether the other market actors also need to have that obligation, it's confusing to me how we could go about our full rulemaking without clarity around that from the Legislature, quite frankly. And so I think that that is something that we need to think about whether we want to provide additional guidance around.

Noted. Thank you, Assembly Member Bonta.

Sorry, one other. I saw when all of our LA colleagues came through and the fact that I just came from a five hour hearing last night on wildfires and the impacts of wildfires. We have to do all of this within the context of COLR rulemaking, within the context of the fact that we will continue to have natural disasters that will take us down. My understanding is during the wildfires mobile service became incredibly sketchy. Clearly Internet service was seriously challenged as well.

What people could rely on was a good old fashioned landline, wireline to be able to do that. So I'm curious about, just from our LA colleagues, this sensibility around making sure that we're looking at these basic services and really weighting the aspect of public safety that has to do with natural disaster. And I don't see it explicitly on your list here. So just for consideration and then would also invite my colleagues to speak on that issue.

So the basic, basic what you have in front of you is the list of elements of what constitutes basic service. Outside of that, the CPUC has adopted rules over facility based communication providers and wireless providers outside of COLR to have backup power of 72 hours in their network elements in high fire threat areas, what we call tier 2 and tier 3. That requirement is currently not across the state.

It's just on those specific higher risk areas that have been designated. So as far as public safety, all carriers, cable companies, fiber companies, wireline companies, wireless companies are required to have that requirement. The CPUC also has requirements on education on customer premise equipment, which is necessary to have batteries for your home equipment in order to be able to make those calls like 911. The federal government does require 72 hours of a battery for customer premise equipment and we have requirements for educational of those requirements that companies must follow.

So I did want to address the public safety component that we do have other requirements outside of this basic service, but it's all interlinked. When you say you are required to offer a voice grade call where customers are able to receive it and make the call, that assumes that it needs to work.

You also require to meet service quality standards. That is required to make sure that outages, if there are any, are restored in a timely manner. So service quality standards and all these requirements are all tied into the public safety component in addition to other requirements that have been adopted to ensure resilient networks.

So in the Eaton and Pacific Palisades Fire, I believe that most of the residents were using their wireless cell phone. They got text messages. Even though not perfect, but they got, they got text messages. They used text messages. They also, we also collected data on what was happening with the fire because people recorded themselves as they... It was scary.

As they came down the hill in their cars, they recorded what was happening around them. They recorded what was going on outside of their houses. And so I think that the what no one really mentioned a landline during the fires. It was really basically about their wireless and their text messages. And so not, not that it was perfect because it wasn't, but it really did save lives.

Assembly Member Caloza.

Thank you, Chair Boerner. And I'm sorry I missed most of your presentation. I was running back and forth from different committees. But for me, you know, when I think of COLR in the hearing today, really what I, you know, really want to ask about with CPUC's work is really the impact to the public.

And I know that when this process came up last year, based off of the materials that I saw, I think you received over 5,000 comments about COLR and a lot of the residents who had major concerns over this. I guess my question to the CPUC is how have those been reconciled? What work have you all done?

I know we have a list of public hearings on this page. I think I missed Assembly Member Bonta's comment, but I think she we also had concerns about maybe some of the geographic areas where there was outreach or not outreach. I have the same concern for the parts that I represent in the state.

I represent Los Angeles, and that is, you know, the largest city in the state. And you have not one meeting in Los Angeles. So can you tell me about how you've reconciled some of those comments that you received from the first time, some about, some more information about your stakeholder process this time around?

Certainly. And thank you for your question. The comments that were filed in the DACAG card as well as the comments made during the public participation hearings, we have records of those and those are part of the record for that application and that proceeding. So those were taken into account in evaluating the AT&T application. And as I shared with you just now, they are informing staff with regard to the COLR proceeding overall. The Los Angeles. We do have a workshop planned in Los Angeles where we're hearing from carriers and public or consumer advocates, April 11th.

Is there a reason why that's not noted on your sheet here?

I think it's on my slide.

It's on the under the workshop. So that may be the confusing part and maybe that can help a little bit explain. Workshops are open to the public as well, but it's more of a panelist setup where public participation hearings is just hearing from the public after an overview has been provided on the proceedings. So workshops are more hands on discussion that is still open.

So you have both these public participation hearings and the workshops. Okay, so that's what. They're separated. That's why they're not on the same sheet. Is there a way right now that customers can, that they have a process of notifying their carrier if they have bad service? Is there something required right now? Can you tell us a little bit more about how we are to best protect consumers and anything that's in place right now?

Yeah, certainly. And thank you for following up on that. We have a consumer affairs branch that addresses informal complaints from consumers for billing, service outages, or other related issues. And they work directly with the carriers. So they have contacts in the escalation center to help customers resolve their issues.

So are you saying right now that carriers are obligated to improve their service or there's just a communication method for filing a complaint?

There's a communication method. There's obligations related to service quality that are part of the public utility or part of the General Order 133.

Okay. Have you received any complaints right now or what does that look like in terms of the feedback that you're getting for the current service that's in place for customers?

So we have a whole report I can send you on that we get quarterly from the consumer affairs branch detailing the types of complaints we get.

Do you have, like a summary or any highlights that you're able to share in this today's hearing?

I don't today, but I'd be happy to provide you one.

Okay. I think that would be super helpful, at least for me in this Committee, as we think about what COLR does and the public interest and what the existing service does and if there's any issues on what the public is saying. Because for me, that's what I think about is the impact to my constituents and really for other people in the state. I know some of my other colleagues aren't here right now, but, you know, there are even more remote parts of the state.

I'm in an urban area, but there's still lots of, I know, connectivity issues in some of the parts that I represent. In terms of just kind of reporting systems, is there anything mandatory right now that's required to ensure better transparency and accountability for what carriers have to report to the CPUC? And I'm sorry if you went over this in your presentation. I missed it.

No, and we didn't go over that. But we do have a quarterly report that we publish for all of the carriers for service quality that those that have to file service quality reports. So AT&T Frontier consolidated and then we also have the small local exchange carriers that I talked about. So there's a very detailed report on their service quality performance, how many lines were out for how long, customer service, you know, how long did it take them to answer the call, those sorts of measures.

Okay, so there's some mandatory reporting requirements in place right now.

And they're publicly available on the website.

On the CPUC website. Okay. That would be really helpful to have. I know this is hearing one, and so we'll follow up with your team. Omar Hashemyan on my team is right behind you. So we'll follow up and get some of these reports. But that's super helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. And we've been joined by Assembly Member Blanca Rubio. Thank you for being here. Do you have any questions for the CPUC before we move on to the next panel? Okay. I want to thank you both for being here. It was very informative. You did a great job answering what you could. I appreciate that.

I know it's always a little tightrope to walk, and you did it well, so thank you. Now we'll continue to panel three, COLR and today's marketplace. Panelists, please approach the dais. We have Jonathan Spalter from USTelecom, the Broadband Association, and we have Ernesto Falcon, the Public Advocates Office of the CPUC. Let's hold our, I think we do have public comments, so let's hold our questions to the end.

Would you like me to begin?

Please do.

Well, thank you very, very much. It's really great to be back in California, I gotta say. Assembly Member Bonta, the answer to your question. Of the 20 states that have completed or are in the process of reforming COLR, 18 have been driven by legislative efforts.

But let me just start by saying thank you. I'm really glad to be here, and I hope we really can do some good today to improve the lives of all Californians and expand opportunities throughout this state. Progress that can only be fully achieved with a successful transition to modern broadband networks.

I'd also like to recognize Assembly Member McKinnor for your good work in thinking through legislative opportunities to address this important issue. And this proceeding really is close to my heart. Before relocating to Washington, D.C., I lived 64 miles down the road in East Bay in Alameda County. I raised my family there.

I was witness to and participated personally in the rise of Silicon Valley in California and its early startup culture, leading companies in that area. It's no surprise to me that the digital revolution really did start here in California. And yet we talk a lot about innovation as if it is the exclusive province of places like Silicon Valley.

But what is actually happening here in this room is just as important and really is part of that innovation story. Innovation in government, how our laws and rules not only keep pace with but actively seed the ground for future progress is utterly essential to unlocking the broad economic and societal benefits we know modern broadband connectivity makes it possible for everyone.

It's a different world today. My generation has a meme when we think about putting our kids in a do it yourself escape room with a rotary phone, old school TV with rabbit ears, and the instructions, you remember this, written in cursive. These are now, we know, baffling artifacts of a very different age. Well, COLR obligations are just the same. These rules were written for a world of voice communications, phone calls at the time were communications, there was no Internet, there were no telephone, cell phones.

You called someone and talked to a family member as they came to the phone. If you were a teenager, you remember this. You hope the cord was long enough to be able to go into your room for privacy. If someone needed to make a call, you had to end your own, and that was usually your parent.

That world is unrecognizable today. Then telephone companies were truly the only game in town, as Dr. Lichtenberg and others in the PUC had explained. Now 70% of Californians are wireless only. Cable, telecom, and satellite companies also offer voice service all over faster and more reliable modern networks.

And yet, because of COLR rules, the companies that USTelecom represents are forced to spend over $1.0 billion, that's with a B, every year maintaining outdated copper technology. In California alone, these antiquated networks are incompatible with the state's very commendable and necessary shift to enhance emergency services. And importantly, they are energy hogs.

One of our member companies estimates its barely used copper network accounts for 36% of its entire carbon footprint. Copper also is mined from earth. Why take it if we don't need it? In fact, shifting to modern networks will allow us to recycle more copper to make things like solar panels and electric vehicles that provide a net environmental benefit. And consumers want this progress.

We know that. A poll earlier this year showed that nearly 70% of Californians support COLR reform once they learned what the acronym SEWP actually meant. And there's clear precedent in their experience with other technologies. Think of this. Last month Apple retired its i14, iPhone 14. And if past its prologue, within five or six years, the company will absolutely stop supporting that phone with iOS updates.

Not because the government gave them permission, but because their customers will have moved on to newer, better models, more features, greater capacity as innovation necessarily moves forward. Yet because of COLR requirements, the company's I represent are required, required to maintain copper based technology that was considered innovative 150 years ago.

All while consumers and innovation has decisively moved on. And it's a good thing too. It's time. It's past time for a change. And what do we give up if we remove outdated COLR obligations? That is really the core question here. And in a word, nothing.

No one will lose the ability to make affordable, reliable phone calls from home. No one will lose the ability to have access to 911. In fact, their access to emergency services will dramatically be enhanced by graduating from copper. COLR reform simply recognizes all the better options that exist in the market today.

It shifts the focus from safeguarding the betamax of telecom, which are copper networks, to ensuring reliable voice service in a technology agnostic and, importantly, company agnostic way. This could be via wireless. As I said, over 70% of us no longer have a landline. It could be via fiber broadband, which is how most landline calls are carried today.

We even have satellite options that can connect us in the most remote locations as well. And products like AT&T's phone advanced product that works like literally like a traditional landline. No need to learn a new device, but connects over wireless or broadband.

It's now used in the 20 plus states that are retiring their copper networks today to focus on the future. All of these options offer deliver and deliver affordable, reliable voice service. And all would constitute a leveling up from copper. So to explain, let's go right into the issue that I know is top of mind.

We've already discussed it, which is public safety. It's a very good and important point. Whether it's fires, earthquakes, health, or safety crises, our phones are and will continue to be our lifelines, period. Full stop. They will be there for us and they'll be even better when they're all connected to modern networks.

This is why firefighters, law enforcement, and first responders across the country have supported these reforms. They're keenly aware old networks are incompatible with modern public safety communication systems. Indeed, during the recent South Carolina fires, evacuation alerts came primarily through cell phone, text, and voice alerts, as you rightly mentioned.

Not only are copper landlines becoming less effective in emergencies, they also are a drag on recovery efforts. And this is an important point. While the companies I represent are required to maintain copper service, there's no requirement that manufacturers keep making the parts. It can take weeks to even locate the equipment needed to restore service.

Sophisticated providers literally are getting parts on eBay. This is not tenable, nor is it in the public interest. So the big question is, how does California level up? The planned approach here, I think is very deft, very sensible, very nuanced, and makes total sense. First, start in areas that have no homes or businesses.

I'll say that again, no homes, no businesses. And as most Californians can appreciate, if the local residents need to communicate in those specific areas, the coyotes are perfectly capable of howling to each other. Second, let's move to areas that are well served by reliable choices.

Voice services run over wire, wired fiber, and or cable, as well as wireless signals. And third, then move in and only then into the final areas where satellite or other service might be involved. And nothing changes until those better options are available and validated. It's a solid plan, but it begs an important question I understand the Chair has rightly raised.

What happens if we grant this relief and later the provider pulls out or the service becomes very poor? It's a great question. And here economic forces powerfully are at play to prevent or quickly resolve this hypothetical. First, the cost and effort of building modern network services we know is formidable.

Tens, hundreds of millions of dollars for certain types of projects. And once in place, it's hard to envision a business case for walking away from all of that investment. And even if they were, if that were to occur, a stranded network, all of that pre-existing infrastructure is literally an investor's dream.

It would be snatched up quickly because the buyer would be able to literally leapfrog over that intensive and cost intensive buildout and skip right to serving an existing built in customer base. COLR reform has been beta tested, as I mentioned, in more than 20 states. Each has a slightly different approach.

Almost all of them have been driven by the exact same legislative process that you're envisioning here. And all aim to focus investment on modern networks that benefit everyone. And California always has been the innovation state. More than 150 years ago, Sacramento actually laid the initial tracks of what would become the first transcontinental railroad.

One of the men who made that possible was Leland Stanford, founded Stanford University, out of which came Silicon Valley, transforming our economy and our world. It certainly changed the life of my second daughter, freshly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. About 12 years ago she was admitted to Stanford's clinical trials for an artificial pancreas.

And it was made possible not because of COLR obligations maintaining copper network, but because of the wireless technology that California was innovating at the time. And she's still wearing those innovations on her body. The state motto right here in the Capitol I saw it is Eureka. I have found it.

We need to find it again, ladies and gentlemen. And that requires innovation in technology, yes, but also here in government. Your stewardship of California's innovation economy is essential in this moment. It literally is a light to the rest of the country and especially meaningful to closing the still persistent digital divide.

And as you move forward, please consider myself, USTelecom, which I am President of, and all of our member companies a resource to you. We've seen other states adjust policies to reflect today's needs and their consumers' needs. And we're here to roll up our sleeves and work with you as a constructive partner. And in that spirit, thank you again for this invitation to be with you and to be back in California.

Thank you.

Chair, Chair and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. My name is Ernesto Falcon. I am the Program Manager for the Communications Broadband Policy Branch with the Public Advocate's Office. Next slide please.

While we are part of the PUC, we are statutorily independent in order to represent the public in our advocacy work. Our mission in the communications sector is to represent the customer through our work in Commission proceedings and in other forums.

We've adopted our COLR framework through our policy principles promoting universality, quality and affordability, and we believe this framework is fundamental and should be applied to any communications proposal regarding the carrier of last resort proceeding. Our guiding principle is any transition should keep people connected with equivalent service or improve their service.

We support facilitating the transition from older network networks built decades ago, much of it was supportive of public funding into modern communications networks that serve key needs such as public safety and economic opportunity. Next slide please.

And while many in industry will criticize the care of last resort rules as antiquated, it's important to remember what lies at the heart of the rules, which is everyone deserves access.

Throughout the history of the telecommunications market, the government has protected the public with things like mandatory build outs, franchise agreements, COLR non discrimination rules and billions in public spending. And today still, universal service remains the best means of delivering equitable, affordable access to 21st century infrastructure. Next slide please.

And while much of our conversation today will focus on copper networks that were long ago paid for by both the customer and the taxpayer, California's COLR rules do not require copper based networks.

This is a quote from a Commission decision more than a decade ago declaring as such, COLR in California is technology neutral, meaning if you can deliver things like 911, access disabilities, access public safety, resiliency, you can switch to any technology.

And around the same time, the FCC created a pathway for COLR companies using copper to transition to fiber optics, which is the main ingredient of any 21st century communications network. What's at stake in this process is whether the public will be made better or worse off based on a government action.

These companies need government's permission to pull back on their commitments and that is a good thing. Next slide please. And I'm going to focus a lot on AT and T simply because they're the party that sought to release themselves from COLR status.

And as the map demonstrates, they cover 75% of the State of California in terms of our households. It is by far the largest COLR in the State of California and for many people it is the only means of communication. Next slide please.

When given a chance to weigh in Last year on AT&T's petition, the public came out by the thousands exceeding the capacity our forums to we made available to hear them out. You can see There's a line out that door.

And even the overflow room of that hearing was filled to the Max, resulting in people having to wait outside. We had a hearing that lasted more than eight hours to collect all of the public comments. The public understands what's at stake in this.

Thousands of comments have been submitted to the CPC so far and more than a thousand of those written comments are just from your constituents alone. Ultimately, people are afraid of being abandoned and the CUBC made the right decision rejecting ATT's petition. And believe me, the public has every right to be concerned.

Areas of California that large telecom companies are most motivated and interested in leaving behind are the ones they deem the least profitable.

And you don't have to take my word for that, just the transcripts from quarterly calls by AT and T CEO to investors states as Such, last year AT&T CEO stated that the company has an interest in reducing its footprint. Reducing its footprint.

That if it can, quote, turn out the lights, walk away, take costs out of the business, I will do that, end quote. The types of areas the company is focused on based on this investor call was areas that are deemed, quote, Low utilization geographies and quote, Low profitable geographies. That basically means two groups of people.

Rural and Low income. Regulations are often criticized by industry, but they serve a key role in balancing the private motive and the public needs. And our state is not alone in this manner. As we've talked through already, a number of states have abandoned the principle of care of last resort.

But many states have modified the rules and a number of states retain those full obligations, much like California does today. So, and I am sure we have heard a lot today so far from carriers, the desire to deploy broadband, how COLR gets in the way. But I have found absolutely no evidence, none that supports that being true.

To date, AT and T has never offered specifics of where it would expand broadband if it was released from COLR in California, but they have regularly asserted they will. But we don't have to guess.

We can just again go back to their calls with their investors and early this year in January, the CEO was asked specifically what would the company do if they received additional funding from tax cuts, presenting from Congress and deregulation in terms of savings.

The company CEO stated plainly that some will go to completing the fiber plan earlier, some of that may be returned to shareholders. That fiber plan is already pre established. It's been established long before of investors and has only been a plan to convert half of AT&T's footprint to fiber to the Home.

That means the other half will still remain as it is now. And our initial estimate is if AT&T received the complete deregulation in the State of California, it would recover a substantial amount of funding from eliminating its copper networks well past $1.0 billion. Next slide please.

So to ensure the public receives their portion of that benefit, their share, the Public Advocates office submitted a straightforward proposal in the PUC process. Build broadband at 100 down 20 Mbps. The FCC standard in exchange for the regulatory benefit of COLR withdrawal.

The FCC established this standard to reflect the needs of an average family of four that needs access to things like telehealth, educational services and economic opportunity. We also retain key protections such as public safety obligations, disabilities access and Low income support.

And while the FCC broadband standard would not require a company to deploy fiber to the home infrastructure, it does require a company to upgrade its networks with fiber optics. By investing a portion of those savings back into those communities. AGT is uniquely positioned to deliver these kind of benefits under a regulated transition.

It already has paying customers in those territories that can finance that infrastructure. The company will increase its profits in the long run. From our proposal. Fiber, whether directly to the home or to wireless towers, is predicted to retain its usefulness for at least 70 years.

Meaning even if it took a decade to recover the cost, there is a massive Runway after the fact for increasing profits through reducing operational cost. Nothing prevents the company from carrying out this regulated transition. It it has always been investor expectations for short term profits that interfere with long term investment goals in our communities.

If a company is saying to you that it will improve broadband deployment from release from COLR, then let's go ahead and put that in writing. There should be no COLRwithdrawal until broadband is deployed in these communities. Next slide please. Thank you for the opportunity to testify here. I look forward to your questions.

Well, our Committee hearing just got interesting, so I'm going to take a point of privilege as chair because I want to get at a couple things that I heard I had. Mr. Spalter, you ask the rhetorical question what we give up. And I think as chair I'd say we give up guarantees.

And I think we have to look at what guarantees COLR gives us and how we weigh the public benefit. So and COLR gives us guarantee of affordability through the Lifeline program. So when we look at those things, there are things that we give up. The question is do we get a trade off in advance?

Do we get a balance and a trade off that helps us? And I think there are the and the question I actually wanted to give a get at is we heard from the CPUC that COLR is technology neutral, but yet you were speaking in your testimony about copper and maintaining copper lines, the cost of maintaining copper lines.

Yet we hear from the public Advocate's office as well as the CPC about the fact that it's technology neutral. And I think it is a fair question whether it's reasonable for one company to.

To hold the entire obligation of that neutrality because there's an economic component to upgrading the network from copper to fiber or wireless to fulfill their obligation. But at the core is what I wanted to point out that assemblymember Bonta said and the CPUC said in reaction was the core guarantee is obligation versus option.

When we no longer have the COLR obligation to serve everyone, then people have options, but not everybody's required to be served.

So that's what I think we need to as a Committee, be very clear on and if you could each comment on one, the idea of obligation under COLR versus an option without COLR and two, especially you, Mr. Spalter, if you could talk to us about when both the Public Advocates office. I probably get your name wrong.

You guys rebranded too many times. I can't remember your name. But anyways, not your name but like the name of your office and the CPUC, they talk about being technology neutral. How feasible is it to be technology neutral in a coler obligation? Because I think that's kind of the elephant in the room.

We might as well call it what it is. That's me. You guys are all used to it, so now you get to be used to it. Thank. Thank you.

I think one of the ways that we need to think about the dynamic between the optionality and obligation is to think as well about, well, what are the actual costs of that obligation costs to a very defined and increasingly smaller number of telecommunications users who are in the sense relegated to a specific predetermined technology that is obligated by.

Obligated through a legislative or regulatory process on a very specific sector that alone carries those obligations.

It is absolutely true that the importance of being able to give the consumers that are currently obligated to use those copper wire networks through the COLR obligation imposed on companies should have the opportunity to have additional options available to them that is being driven by this modern market that we're in, options that include wireless connectivity, satellite connectivity, broadband connectivity that can come with all kinds of new services and opportunities that literally do not exist in current landline copper network frameworks.

I'd also say that technology neutrality is the pathway forward that we actually have to embrace.

If we are going to fulfill California's mandate of broadband for all, we need to be able to have a diverse set of tools that are available that are currently in the market that can deliver broadband and modern networks through a variety of different tools and apparatus and innovations.

Certain areas are going to be more suitable for satellite connectivity, some for other forms of wired in the ground infrastructure.

But until and unless we can embrace the idea of looking forward giving consumers more optionality through a reformed COLR mindset, we are not going to be able to realize those ability to deliver those choices to consumers in the way that 20 other states have begun to do. Look, this is not about taking options away from consumers.

This is not about the notion of risking that the guaranteed service will be unavailable in a world that will be reformed by COLR. In fact, the legislation that you're envisioning creates very specific guaranteed safeguards against that happening.

It is embedded in the legislative principles that you're thinking about here at this body that everybody that currently has a copper network landline will be able to keep that copper landline and use it until and unless there is adequate or better replacement technology. We know that that is going to be externally validated.

It's not going to be companies that will be making that determination. It will be governments making that determination.

I'd also say that currently available right now literally over our heads are satellite technologies and indeed other types of wireless technologies or fixed wireless technologies that are available through things like Phone Advanced that are currently available throughout California that are options that can be immediately available to make sure that we're making this transition and looking forward.

So I'd just like to point out that satellite is outside the jurisdiction of the State of California. So we are not allowed to regulate any guarantees or requirements around satellite, just so my Committee Members and the public are aware. Mr. Falcon, could you respond to that? Because again, we didn't get at the thing.

1 I think there's a Bill and I would not say we have not yet considered it. This is supposed to be an informational hearing on COLR and the obligation. So I think we want to be careful about what is the Bill and if we can keep that ironically over here.

But could you comment on the There is a difference between the words obligation and option. Under COLR AT&T or Frontier, whoever is the carrier of last resort is obligated to serve every customer and is obligated to have an affordable plan for every Low income Californian that may or may not be true in the future.

And how do we weigh those? And two, we have heard from the public advocate's office as well as CPC that it's technology neutral, that that obligation could be fulfilled over any number of technologies. And yet when we Hear from you, Mr. Spalter, you go back to copper and that and an inferior technology.

It's not necessarily, we've been told it's not necessarily the case. So maybe Mr. Falcon, can, can kind of go into that. And I, I think we should be honest about the cost of upgrading copper to fiber or wireless.

So if you have some thoughts about the cost of that and who should be bearing that and should one company in any area be bearing that full cost?

Thank you for the question. So yeah, again COLR in California is technology neutral. It doesn't require copper networks, it does not mandate copper networks. And it is stated as such by the PUC itself in the public in its public decision more than a decade ago.

What is this issue here is companies make investment decisions about where they upgrade, how much they're going to invest in upgrading and what drives those choices is how valuable that customer base is. So you know, it is natural to prioritize fiber infrastructure in areas that are going to make the greatest return on investment. Right.

That's like where you would start to kind of begin financing the rest of the network. And then there is this cutoff point that companies of different sizes and different motivations choose.

Frontier Communications, for example, went through bankruptcy in California and it decided to upgrade hundreds of thousands of their lines to fiber the home simply because they had convinced their investor community that if they can give a 10 year window on the return on investment, meaning in the first few years on paper it looks like they're losing a lot of money.

But the fact is broadband is such a high demand necessity today, right. Like electricity, like water, that the, the confidence about those revenues coming in once you connect people and they're kind of the stickiness of that connection is great enough for them to predict hiring, increasing profits over the years cause their operations costs go down.

To your question Chair about the financing of that conversion, I believe the fair, the discussion that the Cal Advocate's office has put here is if we are allowing a means of decommissioning copper, that is effectively what is being asked as part of deregulation of carrier last resort. Right.

Because that is the argument being made by AT&T in particular is there is enormous amount of funding that is freed up by the company both by reduction of their Operations and maintenance costs, which I think was estimated $1 billion a year in California. Right.

And I will make it very clear the company has said they still make money at the end of the day, even with that high cost. Right. Because again, you think about how important broadband is. If they're going to reduce their OPEX costs through deregulation, some amount of that money has to go back to the public. Right.

The demand we've seen consistently, particularly from those public hearings, is broadband. And I think, as someone you pointed out, for, you know, particularly in times of emergency, live streaming and access to those types of public safety services is key.

And so our concern is release from COLR without some sort of reapportionment of the benefit received by the company, a company that has started a monopoly era, much of its network was paid by the customer and the taxpayer. Right. This isn't completely privately funded out there.

That that process is a shared benefit both by the company and the public at the same time. And that is why we have, we have articulated a need to deploy broadband as essentially the exchange for the deregulatory benefit, because the financing of that benefit comes from the deregulation itself.

But in that world, does then that broadband provider become the carrier last resort, Are they then obligated to serve everybody.

In that under our proposal, they would not at that point, once they've deployed broadband into that community and it's verified. So this is a very important piece of this. You need to verify access, likely.

I would suggest that an approach At&t would choose would be a lot of wireless, fixed wireless deployment, simply because it's technically cheaper than fiber, because you don't need to push fiber wires all the way to the household, which is kind of the premium endpoint. But wireless has this tendency of inconsistency based on the environment.

Maybe it's a forested area, maybe you have a lot of buildings around there. And when we think about the fundamental importance of carrier of last resort, it is about those public safety elements. Right. You need a 911 call to work 99.9999% of the time. Right.

It can't be a spotty cell phone service that substitutes for a wireline, despite the fact that it is, it is an older line, decades old. It always works. Right. And so we can't have customers go from something that always works to something that may work.

In fact, in the public hearings, a gentleman by the name of Richard Snyder pointed out that he had a diabetic episode where his children kind of tried to call 911 on his cell phone and couldn't get through and they had to run to the neighbor's house to call on the phone directly to call 911 services.

So this is why the equivalent or better standard that we are adopting is necessary. Because we're not talking just necessarily about. We're talking about life and death. At the end of the day, that is just how important getting this right is.

And just to be clear, you're not adopting, but it's a proposal from the Public Advocates.

Yeah.

Did you want to rebut.

I am a partner. To know that the Public Advocates office is considering that there could be reasonable, prudent steps to migrate away from the obligations of COLR against certain new types of obligations or options that could be available to consumers.

I believe that the envisioning that that trade off would include a very clear pathway, not flash cuts, but pathway to allow anybody who's currently in an environment where they are under a COLR obligation and using the technologies that are mostly supported by that obligation, which are copper networks, can keep that connection until and unless there is an adequate replacement technology available to them, certified and stipulated by an external authority, a government, the Federal Government, the state government.

That to me is a bargain that makes eminent sense, particularly when we're looking at the fact that the existing infrastructure that so many Californians unfortunately are still obligated to have as their only choice can be replaced and made more meaningful to their lives, both in terms of public safety, economic opportunity and their health care, if they are able to get adequate replacements that go beyond the strictures and limitations that landlines currently give them.

And I think that's what we should be looking forward to. It is not true that it is that a copper landline network call will always be available. We need to understand that that in environments where there are energy cutouts, fires or other unfortunate incidents, that the notion that copper landline telephony will always work is a misnomer.

We have to be very clear that what we want to be able to do is to support greater investment in more secure, more accessible and more durable and resilient technologies that are going to be the pathway forward for our first responders and law enforcement to more easily integrate into during times of crisis.

That is not the case with copper landline networks.

Thank you. With that we'll go to Assemblymember Bonta.

Thank you. I. I'm going to refer us back to the Kingsbury Commitment. Universal service at equivalent price with equivalent value to all. I think ultimately I very much appreciate the chair's framing of this idea of going from obligation to option. And that is essentially what we, without the guarantee that that COLR provides us, would be moving towards.

That's the paradigm that we would be moving towards, away from this commitment of universality at equivalent price with equivalent value for all. I've spent the last year talking about the existence of discriminatory practice for that does not have the ability for us to have universal adequate service for everyone.

We've spent the better part of several years under this chair having deep conversations with CPUC in its inability to draw maps that would allow us to build out the infrastructure that would ensure that we don't have unserved and underserved communities in the State of California. I think a lot of this is context matters.

The current context and prior recent experience that we are all carrying is that we are not actually moving towards a paradigm where we can have certain service that is universal with equivalent pricing and equivalent value.

We've made this once in a lifetime infrastructure investment and have done so still with the possibility that we won't have adequate service and that there will be still inequities built into the development of that infrastructure.

So it's very, very hard to take a leap of faith with a regulatory body that would essentially say we want to consider not obligating a certain set of actors, but we are not creating a framework where we are creating that obligation with a broader set of actors.

And we have a situation where that one actor, the subject of the application with the CPUC really essentially doesn't have the ability to obligate or mandate the other actors in the space. It's not what private business does. Right. But it is what we need to do in government.

And at the end of the day, I want to make sure that we are continuing to not build in inequities into our broadband and telecom system universe here in the State of California. And I think that this is.

It's a very difficult thing to ask us to take that leap of faith with the movement towards kind of deregulating COLR, because we haven't been given the guarantee of something being different to be able to address the inherent inequities that we know exist.

And I understand that concern and I think it's a very valid concern and I understand that there is and we should embrace the fact that movement forward in innovating towards a new paradigm requires change and change can actually create fear and uncertainty.

But I would ask you to also pierce the veil of faith and look at the facts so far. I mentioned that there are something like 20 states that have actually advanced or eliminated advanced reform or eliminated COLR.

In no instance am I aware of, in any of those states have there been dire situations where any community has been relegated to a situation where there is no access to broadband or any carrier or any previously obligated company that now has optionality, has removed service.

And even if you actually move forward, forward beyond those facts and you think about the actual other safeguards that exist that Dr. Lichtenberg spoke of, which is that any company that would want to discontinue service in any community still has to actually get specific approvals from the Federal Communications Commission to do so.

These are safeguards and checks that also are advanced by just the nature of the marketplace. We've seen in certain environments where particularly example, an example is muni broadband, some have been successful, some have actually failed.

In every instance that I'm aware of where there's been a failed muni broadband project, very rapidly, there are alternative providers that have come in at pennies on the dollar to actually take over obligations.

The theory though, is that by moving forward beyond the obligatory framework that has been imposed on a literally on one small part of the communications ecosystem would enable and catalyze not only new investment in better, more resilient, more capable technologies that will be dealing with equity issues in terms of the kind of technologies that should be available more broadly to communities, be they rural or urban or everything in between in California.

But there also will be second and third order advantages, including the maintenance and potentially even the growth of productive skilled broadband jobs in those to serve those new technologies. I don't think that we should use a leap of faith model as the criteria for understanding both legitimacy and the importance of innovating in how we're thinking about color.

We should look at the facts and we should look at the fact that as well that this body and The Senate and SB100 saw that the transition to something like energy efficiency could be envisioned and could be made possible by establishing a phased framework to move towards electric, fully electric vehicles in this state.

I think there's a comparability, the need to be able to have that same mindset with respect to modern telecommunications opportunities for citizens all over the country, all over the state, and become a model for the rest of the country in doing so will, I think, be profoundly in the public interest.

And we can actually deal on a fact based basis of knowing that no one will be left behind in that process.

I appreciate that and this will be my last comment here. I.

We have facts here and receipts here in the State of California around the ways in which the ideology of market competition has disavowed many individuals in the State of California, people who still do not have adequate service, who are still paying more than they should for the service that they receive.

So without I just, I implore us in this Committee to think a little bit more about not wholly relying on the theory of market competition to drive the best action in, in how the market actors and companies will, will show up in the space.

Because we all have receipts that there are significant gaps right now in the way that people have, in the way that people have operated. And a lot of us work a lot to try to close those gaps. This Committee in particular has done a phenomenal job in doing that.

So I would encourage us to be very, to take a hold of the power that we have as a Legislature and require a lot more of an explicit framework and scaffold that will allow us to be able to more easily move from.

I get the kind of the onus being on one particular market actor associated with Copper Line in the State of California, but we have to be able to create a framework and a scaffold that will allow us to be able to have greater certainty and not exclusively rely on market competition and for actors.

To be able to do that on behalf of I think many broadband providers in the state and around the country.

I will affirmatively say that we stand ready to work closely with you and this Committee in evolving those new paradigms and thinking through and test driving ideas that can actually be profoundly beneficial for every part of the state and every citizen in it.

Assembler, my comment on your your questions here. Don't go on faith, go on regulation. There's a long history and you know, all the way back to the Kingsbury commitment. But the, the premise behind it is it's a negotiation with government on the public needs and the private motives.

You take the fact that the United States Congress had to pass a digital discrimination law.

You know, 100 Senators and 435 Members of the House all heard enough evidence in their backyard about the fact that there is discrepancies in how these networks have been deployed and have now made it a federal law stating that all people deserve equal access as a means of establishing what the rules are at the end of the day so that a company can't just say I'm going to go for the most lucrative portion of a community and that's it.

They will go there and then they have to think about zero, but the law requires me to figure out my business plan to get to everyone eventually.

And while I don't share the optimism of my, of my colleague here about the FCC in this, particularly given that they have fired the entirety of what they call the DEI staff, which are all the people enforcing that digital discrimination law. So I don't think you're going to see federal enforcement in the next three to four years.

We have our own powers here in the state to decide the future. And I think it is important for government, both from the PUC and for you all as policymakers to think about what is the appropriate bargain to be struck.

That and what our proposal represents is to the question about the one actor and is it fair or not fair? That actor already has the paying customers.

They have a unique advantage over any other existing network who doesn't have those customers from the fact that they can count on their financing as part of how to upgrade those networks and if they wish to be released from a set of regulations they are detailing as a barrier to their further future plans, even though the CEO, I think, has stated otherwise, I believe that we need to bake those protections in the public to ensure a orderly transition of broadband.

At the end of the day.

Yeah, I would just echo that in that the part about I doubt anybody in California is banking on the Federal Government to protect Californians. So I don't think we should be talking about that here. So with that Assembly Member Rubio and then Mckinnor.

Yes, thank you. Just help me understand. There's a lot of information. And so one of the issues that I want to Clarify. You said, Mr. Falcon, that AT&T, we were talking about money. First of all, you said that AT&T has customers that can pay for, for others.

I'm new to the Committee, so I'm genuinely just trying to figure out what, what everything that we are discussing here and how it affects our consumers. But does that mean that AT&T has customers that pay for others?

Does that mean that they are distributing funds or is it through the CPUC that they're paying into a fund that is distributed to others? What does that specifically mean?

Yeah, I'm referring to the kind of, you know, they think about their, their revenues across the State of California. Right.

And each household is paying something in their Bill every month and the company is taking a portion of those revenues and making a decision of who are we upgrading with, with revenue, what are we giving to shareholders through dividends. And their fiber plan, as detailed, is about half their network.

And typically the way an ISP identifies kind of the priority targets is who, who will pay me the most money back on my investment in them. Meaning, you know, customers or businesses, people who would pay, you know, $90 for broadband or $100. Right.

They're the, the premium targets to look at because they will recover their initial investment in that household, upgrading it faster. Typically industry standard is around three to five years.

But the problem here is when you create that threshold, and that's kind of driven by Wall street investors expectations of, you know, if I'm going to invest money in your company, I expect you to make a profit. Around this period of time, there are households who can't pay a very high price for broadband.

You could pay a modest price for broadband, $60 and, or $30. And the fact of the matter is they may take longer than three to five years to recover their investment.

But as I articulated in my, my testimony, that fiber line, which is the 21st century infrastructure, every single communications network from Starlink to fixed wireless to fiber to the home to cable even, all are using this, this type of transmission medium to upgrade because it will last for decades. 70 years is the initial estimate.

Could be 80, 90, even 100 years. So if you think about buying any sort of asset that you know it's going to be useful and valuable and profitable once you've paid it off, you're looking at just monetizing the value, you know, year after year after year after year.

And so the reason why I say AT&T is uniquely situated is they don't have to advertise to find revenue from these communities that are still in DSL copper infrastructure. They're already paying right now a lot of money for that line today.

So you can plan your financing based on these customers will pay us over the coming months, years. Because there isn't really a world where people will say I'll discontinue my broadband line for three or four months or like, you know, I'm going to use it for like maybe half the year. Right.

Everyone uses it consistently and the demand is very high. And so your confidence about that revenue stream, that revenue from those customers you already have, will be there to pay your costs over some period of time.

Okay, so then we're specifically talking about AT&T. What happens to those smaller companies that the non AT&T companies that serve rural areas that if the Premise is that AT&T, because they're so big they can contain the cost, what happens to the small companies that cannot do what you say AT and T is doing?

Thank you for that question, Assemblymember. Our proposal in the CPUC proceeding about reforming COLR is optional. So if a company seeks to withdraw, they have to deploy broadband as the precondition to withdraw. So if a company wishes to simply retain their Kohler status, they could. Right. We're not mandating they build broadband.

We're just saying if you're going to move through that process of releasing yourself from the obligation to serve, as the chair has pointed out, into a option to serve, the expectation should be that the savings from that deregulation, some portion of it has to go to the public in some form.

And from us the perspective is to upgrade those networks to deliver at least the FCC minimum of broadband, which is 100 down, 20 up, which can come in a number of ways. But I would think typically that would probably come from upgrading fixed wireless broadband and delivering fiber infrastructure closer to those communities.

And you know, again, AT&T still makes money from this in the long run, it just not a short term profit return. They won't make money back on it in two to three years. But in the long run they will. The public benefits, the company benefits. And that's what we're trying to strike as a window.

Right? No no, I understand that but I'm not talking about AT&T. I may be confused with the information or the question I'm asking, but I'm talking about the smaller or the smaller the way that I see technology is you the more you invest.

I heard somewhere as computers for example have doubled in capacity and halved in cost and that is based on an investment. And what I'm hearing is that AT&T has that ability to invest. What happens to those companies that don't have the ability to invest?

Removing AT&T from this conversation, from this question is what happens to those small rural companies that cannot invest and they choose to get out? What, what does that look like?

So I think the they should remain under their carrier vestiges or obligations simply because they're likely, especially when they're small in rural. The, the odds are they're probably the only means of communication in those areas. Right.

And under the POC process right now all of the small local exchange carriers have all said they're not, they're not asking to withdraw from coal. So you know, I haven't put a lot of emphasis on them simply because none of them are seeking to withdraw. All of them are fine with staying under regulated under the carry foster's.

Is that correct? Let me. Is that correct?

No, it's not correct.

The small local exchange carriers have all stated on the record they are not seeking withdrawal from COLR.

Well, I can't speak specifically to every single California company but I know that those that I represent have been very clear that transitioning from the obligations of COLR to be able to deepen their investments in different kinds of plan, different types of technologies has been driving their consideration.

That certainly is the case in many of the 20 other states where there has been efforts at COLR reform or initiated actually the transition from Kohler already where there are numerous local exchange carriers that are local providers that also have been deeply supportive of that transition because it gives them the opportunity to actually invest in sounder more effective technologies for the communities that they're serving and or allow other technologies to be deployed and used in their place.

So in a previous panel, in a previous panel, the small rural telcos represent 1% of the population of California, but that 1% is probably rural communities. Right, they're the small rural telcos. If you looked at the previous map, somebody correct me on this frontier was 24% AT&T was 7575% and 1% was rural tacos.

So that's what we're talking about.

I Understand that again, but when we say 1% as if it's such a small amount of population, but to the 1%, it's a big deal. And so that's why I'm trying to figure out, you know, what this looks like for them as well. The other question I guess is for those 1%, what does this look like again?

And I spoke to some folks from, I think the company was called Ponderosa that serve really, really rural communities. What is their obligation? Or what is that 1%? What is the obligation for that 1%?

So anyone who is classified as a small local exchange carrier is regulated as a Kohler in the same way as AT&T in that sense.

One thing I think there's a reason why there's a difference in California versus other states is California is one of the few states that runs its own public spending program, a state version of the universal service Fund. And so the small local exchange carriers do receive public funding in order to keep prices low, help them upgrade.

And part of that requires them to be part of the PUC's regulatory process. And so I would suspect the small telecoms in other states probably weren't subsidized by their state to maintain service or upgrade and therefore there wasn't any loss from seeking deregulation.

Whereas the small lex here are deciding do they maintain the regulatory environment as well as the policies, public support, structure of subsidies which to their, you know, they make the decision and, and their calculus is this is better for our books to maintain some support from the state in terms of funding things like the high cost A and B Fund and you know, and, and remain regulated as the carry of last resort in these areas.

Thank you. And then, you know, the other caution that I would like to is. Well, that I would like to throw out. There is, you know, the, the CPUC doing some regulations and we're doing regulations as well and bills.

How do we balance that so that we don't contradict any laws or any regulations, but also with the best interest of everyone and not try and pick and choose who the winners and losers are. We've been here where, and not just necessarily CPUC, but there's a contradiction.

Regulations from the regulatory agencies to the bills that we write, how do we strike that balance? Think that there's some bills moving through and that would be the question obviously not to be answered here.

I don't have specific bills, but I know that in the past where the Legislature's trying to do something and then the, you know, the regulatory agencies are trying to do something else and sometimes they're in conflict. And you know, I would ask, you know, the chair, when we are going through these processes, how do we balance that?

The who will be the lead in, I guess in the new regulations.

So we discussed this in the last panel when we had the CPUC up here. Well, like we, I think we asked the panel and then at the beginning of Mr. Spalter's testimony, he said 18 of the 20, correct me if I'm wrong, states who have sought collar release have done it through the legislative process.

I would point out that we're one of two states, I believe one or two. We're the only one that has like a CPUC, but another state has something that's like the CPUC and no one else has like a CPUC. So it's always different in California. We're 40 million people.

We like being different, we like being the best and we aim for that. So I think there's always a balance and you know, it depends on the subject.

And if you ask me about certain things, if you ask Tina about certain things, if you have me about certain things, we'd all have different opinions about when we think we need to step in, when the CPUC should step in. But you know, everybody has their agency that they like to focus their attention on.

So we did discuss it and that, you know, there was this. So that that would be the answer.

I do apologize for not being here. Yeah, it's okay. We were running around in Committee. Of course, of course. That's why I'm asking.

I appreciate you being here. Yeah, we do have, I would just want to point out on time, we do have a lot of people outside waiting to.

If I could just have one more person, one more and then.

Tina. Sorry, Ms. Mckinnor.

Well, thank you for your point, Assemblymember Rubio, about the 1% that is an important constituency and what's very true, even for companies like Ponderosa, which is a Member of my organization, being able to invest more deeply into next generation technologies rather than having to continue to support copper wire networks, which is extraordinarily an expensive Proposition, would be a choice that they all make, many of them, and here in California and around the country would be much more eager to participate, in fact, in investing in programs to co invest in things like the bead program, the $42 billion program to get next generation technologies where it's not right now would be expedited and accelerated if a lot of the actual overhang of things like Kohler obligations weren't part of the financial picture that's making it more difficult for them to be able to target investments where it's needed, which is the next generation technologies.

And my hope, and I think that our obligation really is to work very closely with you and this Committee now and in the future to think through what would be the right formula for allowing everybody in California, including the 1%, to have exactly the same types of options and opportunities that will come with next generation networks.

Thank you. In the interest of time, if we can keep our questions succinct and our answers more succinct, that would be great. And with that Assembly Member McKinnor and then Coloza.

Just piggybacking off of what Assembly Member Bonta said, how would California's COLA requirements help address the state's digital divide? And what guardrails would be in place to ensure that all communities are being brought into the modernization era, including minority communities that are traditionally left out?

Extremely important question.

As we're evolving or thinking about moving beyond a regime that existed in a monopoly era, one of the opportunities that we have to actually consider is how do we prime the pump and open the floodgates of the kind of investments that will necessarily follow when there is less regulatory overhang over companies in an increasingly competitive market to actually make those investments.

We've seen across the country that there have been consumers themselves that have been making the choice Assembly Member to relinquish older services and going to new ones. I think there's now then less than 5% of the population that's served by the number one copper line copper wire network provider here that are.

It's less than 5% of the population.

What we need to do is to ensure that whatever legislation is envisioned by this Committee will have it's part of not only its principles but its values to ensure that there will be a cadence of the onboarding of different approaches and different phases of the legislation to ensure that at the end of the day, anybody who is currently covered by the Kohler obligations will be able to maintain their choice or their technology until such time as there's an alternative technology.

And that has to be true not only in our most remote and rural parts of the state, but also in our denser urban areas that have that need to have a claim to be able to enjoy the same kinds of opportunities, the same types of technologies and the same types of services that will come with next generation networks.

Nobody should be left behind. Zero persons.

That's a blimber, if I may. Kohler is about voice universal voice access and there is no divide given that it is successfully ensured nearly everyone has voice communications access in the stock state.

The issue I think with the digital divide is broadband, which is why we have articulated in our proposal releasing from Kohler the historical obligation to make sure everyone has access to voice communications should be if you're, if you're asking for a release for that, replace it with broadband. Right.

Therefore you eliminate the digital divide as an exchange of that, of that regulatory benefit.

Thank you, Assemblymember Coloza and then Assemblymember Bonta.

Thank you so much. Chair, I just have two quick questions. I'll be brief. I know we've talked a lot about the relationship and the benefits for both the carriers and for the consumers. And I appreciate the questions from my colleagues about some of the rural impacts.

And I'm not sure if you're both the best to answer this question, but I'll ask anyway. But is there any analysis or are there any known impacts to tribal communities as it relates to Choler is question one.

And then my second question is what impacts, if any, are there to workers and any potential loss of jobs or addition of jobs? Just curious to hear your thoughts on both. So impact on workers impact on rural tribal communities, certainly.

So a number of California tribes right now are building their own fiber networks. They are, you know, in the early stages of that bead and other kind of major infrastructure funds are helping them, you know, substitute their own infrastructure.

So to an extent that there's a tribe that has self provisioned a full network to replace any access lines, I think, you know, they have kind of taken care of their own problem to the extent of Kohler and the impact it will be on the tribes that don't have that infrastructure yet.

The release of Kohler puts them at risk. Given that the motivation of reducing the footprint or increasing profits by reducing costs and targeting who you would reduce those costs from is the real question, absent regulatory controls, to your second question about workers.

The Cal advocate's proposal about requiring an upgrade to these networks as the condition of before exit will put a lot of people at work. You have to put a lot of fiber in the ground. You have to put a lot of construction workers and technicians out there deep into these areas to provide those upgrades.

These lines were built decades ago. They haven't seen that kind of infrastructure work in a long time. And so we would facilitate, I think, an enormous amount of work and job opportunities.

Let me speak to the job opportunities. Several of the companies that I represent work very deeply and successfully with labor workforce.

One of the principles that is envisioned in the movement towards modern technology, infrastructure and moving away from some of the outdated COLR obligations is the principle that not only will consumers be leveled up, but also the workforce, including the union workforce, will have the opportunity for the kind of retraining that was going to be required for actually being able to provide the support and the labor to make these new networks possible.

We envision that that process is not only going to sustain skilled broadband jobs, but increase skilled broadband jobs.

One of the companies in this state that has very deep relationships with labor has embedded in their very contracts those retraining provisions that will be accelerated if we actually can move forward in this transition, helping not only consumers and families and communities benefit from new technologies, but also helping the workforce that will be supporting those new technologies in those communities to make their transition to the kind of reskilling and retraining that's going to be required. And we're all committed to making that happen.

Did you have any comment on the any tribal impacts?

I don't know enough about the environment here in California. What I will say is that many, as Mr. Falcone has pointed out, many tribal communities have looked at various subsidy programs like the BEAD programs to help accelerate their ability to actually deliver more next generation broadband to those communities.

It's my belief that the pathway to doing so will be incentivizing more of that investment by those communities. And I've never seen a situation where regulatory impositions as an incentive for investment has ever been successful.

Thank you both for your testimony, really helpful and I'll be following up with both of you. Thank you. Assemblymember Bonta.

Thank you so much. Chair, I think at the heart of what we've been able to talk about over this last several hours is one is kind of what is the legislative, what is the legislature's role in this? And I really appreciate, I want to appreciate the Chair for bringing forward a very robust conversation about this.

I was not convinced by the CPUC's testimony, nor have I been convinced by prior practice of the CPUC that the entirety of figuring out how we move away from the Kohler framework that we have in existence should be entirely borne by the CPUC.

I think this hearing has certainly brought to light the need for us as a Legislature to lean in very closely to being able to provide more direction to the CPUC about how we create that path to towards other opportunity. Panelists, Mr.

Spelter raised the issue of even just take SB100 and the promise of just transition and moving towards a green economy. I talk to workers every single day that have not had the promise of those retrained reskilling jobs show up for them as we moved away from energy. And that's problematic for me.

I, I don't want to repeat that.

So that is an area where the Legislature should be leaning into this issue around kind of removing the obligation for one particular actor and making sure that we're creating a pathway to be able to support other technologies and still creating some obligation that would allow us to be able to ensure that we don't have digital inequity is also something that we as a Legislature need to weigh in on and direct the PUC to be able to sort out over time.

I ran a Bill last year, $1.0 million was spent or more was spent to deny our ability to have a definition around digital discrimination offered into this Legislature.

And that was an indicator to me that we cannot exclusively rely on the good intentions of market actors to establish how we might be able to move forward with our efforts to ensure that we have both digital equity for all and access to voice for everyone.

We are certainly in a brave new world and we cannot have that entirely dictated either by the private market forces or one regulatory body to be able to do that. That's why we're legislators. That's why we're here.

That's why, that's why we represent, you know, 500,000 each of us for on the Assembly side and a million on the Senate side to be able to do that.

And I think we would be remiss if we disavowed ourselves of the obligation and responsibility that we have to be able to help us move forward as we think about the carrier of last resort.

And I appreciate that deeply. I would offer as a thought that I know in my conversations with many broadband providers before coming to speak to your Committee, that I've heard not only the intention, but a real fact that they are very deeply interested in working collaboratively with this Committee and with this Legislature to evolve that brave new world that you're thinking about, of how do we actually move forward where we can move towards new technologies, but on a value based and just way.

And I would point to the type of collaboration and coordination that has taken place, I think very profitably, but also productively with each of the 20 states that have also undertaken steps to think anew about ways to move beyond older, older regulatory frameworks and towards new possibilities.

And I think that there could be a lot of learning in understanding how many of those States have actually undertaken those initiatives. States like Colorado, as the chair had mentioned, Illinois, Minnesota, many others have taken these steps.

And I think that we'd be very willing to share with you our learning and develop a real set of data about what's working and what can continually be improved. And we're willing to do that work with you.

I will hold you to it.

Thank you. And I want to thank everybody. Does anybody else have any questions? No questions? Okay.

Thank you both to the for. For this. I knew this was going to be the best part of. I shouldn't say best because I mean Dr. Lichtenberg was fantastic. Right? I mean British common law starting out a oversight hearing with British common law was great, but I knew that was the very dynamic part of the hearing.

I appreciate both of your comments. And when we think about what's the role of the Legislature, I think we've done many oversight hearings of the CPUC and I do think it is our obligation as that Legislature to protect the public interest. And however we do that, I do still want to make a comment.

I know Assemblymember Rubio isn't here. Do want to make a comment around the small rural telcos and that to our knowledge and our conversations, they have not talked about cholera relief.

And I think when we think about a definition and we think about obligation versus option and making sure people are served, yes, it would be great if we could upgrade everybody to fiber. We do have FFA funds. Hopefully we'll still have beat funds. We have Casa funds.

We do have ways of supporting our small telcos and they provide an invaluable service in very difficult conditions. And as somebody who worked in the telecommunications industry, I'm always odd when they come into my office because I don't even know why they're doing them, what they're doing but there providing this amazing public service.

So I thank you for that. And with that I'm going to close out this panel. We're going to move on to portion of public comment. I'd like to ask those who come in to approach the name and the MIC with name affiliation and concerns. I'm going to ask everybody to limit themselves to one minute.

We're going to take the people outside who have been standing the entire time. You guys all got to sit. They did not get to sit. We're going to take the people who have been standing first name, position concerns. One minute only if you could do it less. I've had coffee, tea and water and you're between me and a little break.

I hear you, Katherine Brandenburg, representing athletes and Entertainers for kids and 911 for kids. We support anything that makes sure that people have the ability to call 911 in an emergency. I just want to note that one of the speakers did say, if you have a landline, you can keep your landline.

I think we heard, if you like your Doctor, you'll be able to keep your Doctor. Just remember that phrase. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Members. Jordan Lindsey with the ARC of California, representing Californians with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This issue crosses a whole lot of our communities, including Californians with developmental disabilities.

While we have asked for data about how many Californians that rely on Copperland lines are individuals with disabilities, we have found, actually, at least we've been told by all the parties that that data doesn't actually exists. So we have heard anecdotes. However, we're not really sure how many Californians actually with disabilities rely on this technology.

What we are aware of is that Californians with developmental disabilities do rely more and more on newer technologies for inclusion and access and participation in our community lives. So we do heavily encourage continued investment in broadband for those issues. And so that Californians have developed developmental disabilities can continue to participate in those ways. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. My name is Kelly Murphy. I'm an Executive Board Member for local 9400, CWA. We cover from Eureka to Santa Rosa, West Contra Costa, L.A. County, and down the Inland Empire.

We stand opposed to the board and to the CPUC alleviating AT&T's obligation to Kohler, mainly because we don't believe the Bill actually has a set recourse or a way for individuals to fight against a company of that size.

In this case, you have an individual with no capital funds and no expertise having to go up against a large corporation with hundreds of lawyers that keep pushing them back. So we think we're leaving our underserved customers even a worse situation if we make it a option rather than an obligation.

So again, we stand against leaving them of that obligation.

And thank you for listening to my option versus obligation comment. But let's not talk about the Bill because this is not a hearing about the Bill. This is hearing about COLR, generally speaking. So let's not talk about the Bill here. There'll be a time and place for that.

Hi, my name is Ken Borges, and I am a CWA union rep and disposed to AT&T ending its color obligation because it will leave communities and customers without the guarantee of quality service. Rural areas, for example, cannot rely on wireless services and quality connections. They don't have Internet, they don't have anything.

So phone lines, even satellite doesn't reach in certain areas with the mountains. So that's it.

I'll be simple. My name is Richard Ketchum. I'm Communications workers of America 9404 local representative and I am totally against this and opposed. Thank you.

Name, affiliation and concerns with the General topic of COLR.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Chair and Committee Members. Denton Carlson. I'm the chief of police for the San Ramon Police Department. I'm also on the Executive Committee Member for the California Police Chiefs Association.

Wanted to let you know that as an Association representing the 335 police chiefs in California and the 27 million Californians who fall under our jurisdictions, we are in support of modernizing the system. And that's the most critical aspect for us. We're here for public safety.

And I know I represent first responders in the whole network for from police departments, sheriff's departments, fire departments, emergency medical services that we want to modernize this system. The fact that the testimony today is that some of the equipment is being attained by ebay to maintain the copper network, that worries me.

Because one of our critical goals is protecting the vulnerable from harm. We don't know when that vulnerability is going to happen and who it's going to be. Could be any Member of our community, from the aging community to the disadvantaged community to rural Californians. We, we want to be able to be there when they need us.

And I just want to say that we're here to work with you and the stakeholders involved to help make it happen. So thank you.

One minute exactly. Thank you.

All right, Members. Madam Chair, Members of the Committee. My name is Rodney Cooper. I'm Director of Technical Programs from Information Technology Disaster Resource Center. A mouthful. We are a national nonprofit, we're vendor neutral that works with the government and non governmental sectors to bring technology and capacity to first responders and communities during disasters.

Our position here is that history shows that restoring copper, dealing with copper lines during a disaster, trying to get that back online is not really feasible for the future and that for the future, modernizing capacity, modernizing a framework for telecommunications in California looks beyond copper and looks to fiber to help make that happen. Thank you for your time. Again, my name is Rodney Cooper.

Hi, I'm Cheney England with the California Community Foundation. For more than 100 years we have been CCF and I'm saying that because I understand there's a new US Telecom coalition that also goes by CCF focused on this issue. So I want to make sure we're being clear.