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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (2965)	2/26/1999 10:41:00 AM
From: WTC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

"Lifeline service" may not mean the same thing to all <Are ILEC's responsible for delivering life line POTS? If so I'm not sure that the regulatory playing field is should be entirely even. Also, aren't the US phone companies mandated by law to provide service to every home?"> Every telephone franchising authority I am aware of (typically, a division of the state public utilities commission) has its legal definition of "lifeline service" and a requirement that the ILEC provide such service to customers as long as certain conditions are met. The tricky part here is that there are two quite different uses of the term "lifeline service." One involves service availability criteria and assured, free access to public safety answering points (i.e., '911 service'). The service availability criteria generally involve assured continuation of service during large-scale failures of the public power system, and so require standby powering and remote standby powering with the newer telephone technologies. We can look for the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to be the Fed's oar in the water on basic requirements that will probably become a part of what constitutes basic, lifeline service, as well. To oversimplify CALEA a bit, this assures law enforcement access to talk circuits and call progress information under a court order, a bit more than we traditionally think of as a part of wiretapping. I personally see an equitable basis for level playing field regulation of both ILECs and CLECs that are certificated to provide local telephone service. If we want to let the market decide if customers really need some established criteria for continuity of service after an ice storm, or direct access to 911 emergency services, what is the logic for obliging on of the carriers, the ILEC, to make this a part of every service they offer? This seems to be a public policy issue. The other common definition of "lifeline service" pertains to subsidized, means tested, basic telephone service. That is, if you have an income of less than xx dollars a year, you may subscribe to what has been designated as lifeline service for a price below cost. Typically, this is a message rate service that includes about 50 message units, for about $5.00 a month, the last time I looked at it. It is intended to be no-frills, and cannot be ordered with vertical services like call-waiting and three-way calling, but it includes touchtone in most jurisdictions. Now, this lifeline service seems to be one that need not be duplicated by every competitive carrier as a public policy issue, AS LONG AS the funding mechanism for the subsidy truly comes from public funds. If it is just a franchise requirement for the ILEC to suck it up, then the advent of local competition is probably a time to look at this lifeline service in the same context as the Universal Service Fund -- ILECs and CLECs both contribute. The disputes could still arise at the edges: do wireless companies licensed under CMRS rules but providing the allowed fixed services come under all the funding requirements for the PUC's public policy initiatives? Finally, conditions for the provision of telephone services upon request is regulated by the franchising authority, again, typically, the state. It is common to require that service be provided to virtually all addresses in the certificated area, but there may be steep up-front construction charges (easily thousands of dollars)for providing service far away from any existing service. Under the rules I am familiar with, most of these up-front charges may be recouped when additional services are installed along the route of the construction -- but specific rule sets vary, and are complicated. So, there is certainly this caveat, that yes, you can get telephone service anywhere in the franchise area, but it may cost big time to get it established. There is also the possibility, still in this day and age, that a customer could build a cabin in an uncertificated area, i.e., no telephone company has the right or responsibility to deliver telephone services. This could probably be worked out with the PUC and one of the ILECs that provides service in an adjacent area, for a price, but it is the exception to the rule that telephone companies are required to provide telephone service anywhere in the U.S. It just ain't so. There are a lot of back-woods "grey areas" (uncertificated) in the western tail of my state, Virginia. It would not surprise me to discover that many of the sparsely populated western states have quite a lot of "grey areas", too -- and prime cabin-buliding sites.