The California Public Utilities Commission voted Thursday to deny AT&T’s request to withdraw as a carrier of last resort (COLR), but also decided to reexamine its determination rules. Meanwhile, a new bill in the state Legislature would revise the requirements any company must meet to be called a COLR.
The COLR is a cornerstone of utility regulation. It obliges an airline to provide basic services to all customers within its territory, regardless of where they live. It can provide telephone services via any technology, such as copper, fiber optic, cable, voice over internet protocol (VoIP is a combination of copper and fiber optic) or wireless mobile internet. AT&T California has held this title since 1996. It planted utility poles and laid copper telephone cables throughout the state.
In March 2023, the company applied to the CPUC to be released from the designation, adding that the cost of maintaining a copper network covering less than 5% of their territory had become too expensive.
“To comply with the COLR obligation to provide basic telephone service, AT&T California continues to operate an existing network consisting of copper lines and legacy circuit switches,” the application said.
The move led to a backlash from the public. Commissioner John Reynolds said Thursday that the CPUC received more than 5,000 public comments and held eight public forums that attracted more than 5,800 attendees.
Most of the outrage was driven by concerns about the loss of landlines and forced dependence on mobile services, especially of people in remote areas. There is also the fear of losing service in the event of fire or other emergencies.
“Copper uses electricity. But when the power goes out, the power is provided by the phone company through very large generators,” said Regina Costa of The Utility Reform Network, a nonprofit watchdog group that advocates for affordable power and phone service. “If an earthquake happens and the power goes out for two or three days, you still have local phone service.”
Tedi Vriheas, AT&T’s vice president of external affairs, said no communications system is guaranteed to survive a natural disaster, not even copper. And the company is misunderstood. They don’t plan to take away landlines, she said.
The upgrades the company has made include replacing copper wires with fiber optic wires, using the same landlines and poles. People could still connect their phones to it. Customers can choose to use mobile or VoIP, but they don’t have to.
But there could soon be changes to the rules designating a COLR. The CPUC also voted to revise the COLR rules “to adapt regulations to changing market conditions and technological advances while continuing to meet the needs of Californians.”
On Feb. 15, a bill proposing revisions, Assembly Bill 2797, was introduced in the Legislature by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood. If the bill passes, AT&T could create a way to remain COLR in rural areas, which the company says have about 100,000 customers, while exempting them from COLR obligations everywhere else.
“Where they only have a copper pipe, we don’t touch it,” says Vriheas. “That is not part of this bill. We chose rural California for our footprint because we heard people were afraid, they only had a copper line, it was their only way to communicate. And if that’s the case, nothing that will happen there. That will be the status quo. And then we’ll develop a plan with our rural partners on how to transition those customers to advanced services. But that will take a long time.’
Vriheas said the law will only affect areas where the census shows no population, and people in cities and suburbs who have other options.
“It will impact people in urban areas, like San Francisco, where I have nine competing providers that I can get my landline from,” she said.
According to Terry Schanz, McKinnor’s chief of staff, the city rules would apply even if both options were wireless providers.
“The committee is absolutely right to propose looking at this in a very comprehensive and thoughtful way,” Costa said. “But AT&T is trying to go through the side door of the legislature to convince them to adopt a process where all AT&T would have to do is send a letter claiming that there are alternative providers, and no one would have a chance to do that verify. The CPUC would have no option to do anything other than accept the letter, put a stamp on it and stick it in a file.”
Costa warned that carrier of last resort rules should not be adopted on a single-company basis.
“They are industry-wide rules. And they should not be rewritten piecemeal, looking at a single application, not just AT&T. Instead, the rules should be reviewed by the committee,” she said.
AT&T’s request to be released from designation as a COLR must also be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. AB 2797 will go before state Senate committees this summer before an Aug. 31 vote in the Legislature.
