CPUC Proposes Heightened Telecom Service Quality Enforcement

California telecom service quality standards could expand to more types of providers and carry new penalties under a California Public Utilities Commission staff proposal released last week. Current enforcement for plain old telephone service (POTS) hasn’t improved service, CPUC staff found. “In addition, the light-touch approach for VoIP and wireless services has not yielded improved service quality for those customers.”

The CPUC is seeking comment on staff’s proposed changes by Sept. 2 and replies by Sept. 17, Administrative Law Judge Thomas Glegola said Thursday in docket R.22-03-016. It is weighing whether to change its 2016 enforcement framework under General Order 133-D, which includes a mechanism that lets carriers avoid fines by promising to invest twice the amount. Criticizing that method, staff proposed different thresholds for assessing service quality violations, more stringent standards and automatic customer credits, among other changes.

"Voice service, irrespective of technology type, is a key component of essential utility service to enable health, safety, and full participation in society,” CPUC staff wrote. “Whether it is mass nationwide or statewide outages, community isolation outages, or individual outages, communications service outages cause frequent and significant disruptions to Californians. In California, multiple government data sources have indicated that communications outages in recent years across different technology platforms,” including POTS, VoIP and wireless, “have either maintained high occurrence rates or even increased over the years.”

CPUC staff zeroed in on AT&T. "Despite an established standard with penalty mechanism, AT&T, the largest POTS provider in California, has never restored more than 56 percent of their outage tickets within 24 hours from 2018 to 2023,” staff said. “In fact, AT&T’s performance has decreased steadily from repairing 56 percent of outage tickets within 24 hours in 2018 to just 39 percent in 2023."

ALJ Glegola asked for comments on whether staff is correct in its observation that the current investment-in-lieu-of-fine mechanism hasn't improved service quality, and if it can "be reformed by meaningfully increasing the penalty amount?" In addition, Glegola asked, "If technician staffing is a limiting factor in complying with service restoral goals, should the investment-in-lieu-of-fine mechanism be replaced with an alternative where telephone corporations must invest the incremental necessary amount in ongoing operational expenditures (OpEx) related to the hiring and retaining of technicians to improve service quality by a significant margin?"

Staff proposed using multiple rather than single thresholds such as "less than 24 hours" for service quality standards. "Staff finds that while single thresholds can establish a bright line for ease of measuring carrier service quality compliance, they are inadequate in capturing the severity of service failures," Glegola said. Instead, staff proposed that the CPUC "instead use multiple thresholds, focused on network outages and service outages, to reflect increasing severities with escalating penalties,” he said. The new penalty structure should apply to VoIP and wireless, not just POTS, staff said.

Also, staff proposed extending to uniform regulatory framework (URF) ILECs an installation requirement that currently applies only to general rate case (GRC) ILECs. GRC ILECs are small carriers that account for just 1.4% of California's 3 million POTS lines, it said. URF ILECs are large incumbents like AT&T that were relieved of rate-regulation obligations in 2006 and have the most landlines. Currently, the commission requires only GRC incumbents to install 95% of new service requests within five business days. Also, staff proposed increasing that standard to 100% with exceptions.

Moreover, CPUC staff proposed adding to an existing requirement that live agents answer 80% of phone calls each month within 60 seconds. Staff suggested that agents should also answer 100% of calls within five minutes. Plus, staff proposed requiring that telcos offer web chat and postal mail options, and address and possibly reconcile customers' billing inquiries by the next billing cycle.

Additionally, the ALJ wants feedback on “a new penalty in the form of an automatic customer credit." Staff proposed a $5 daily refund during outages for most customers and $10 for customers living in disadvantaged communities and “communications areas of affordability concern.” Glegola asked if the CPUC should "levy an additional fine on carriers, equivalent to the total customer credit, or a percentage thereof, payable to the State’s General Fund?”

Another staff proposal would require that wireless carriers "create and maintain wireless coverage maps with a customer-facing interface that has the capability to verify coverage at the address or location level with equipment requirements,” the ALJ said. Also, staff suggested telcos should notify customers about aggregate annual fine amounts they must pay. In addition, Glegola asked how the CPUC can "hold telephone corporations accountable for mass outages as distinguished from localized outages?"

The CPUC staff report is “promising,” Paul Goodman, legal counsel for consumer advocate Center for Accessible Technology, emailed. The commission previously was “overly deferential” to providers, he said. “The proposed metrics are based not on provider convenience or justifications, but on actual customer impacts.” Goodman especially praised a staff proposal that shifts from fines to customer refunds. “Those customers actually impacted by outages will be the ones that benefit from the penalties/refunds that providers pay.”

AT&T shares the "goal of increasing broadband access in rural and tribal communities and [bringing] broadband access to everyone and [we] are committed to keeping our California customers connected," said a spokesperson, adding that the carrier "routinely" exceeds the state's customer trouble reports metric. However, the CPUC asked about deleting that particular standard. AT&T urged the CPUC "to set policies that encourage investment in broadband to increase access, adoption, and affordability to help close the digital divide."

The Utility Reform Network applauds staff's plan to "require a customer facing interface for wireless coverage maps so that the public and the Commission can obtain a realistic picture of the availability of wireless service," emailed TURN Telecom Policy Director Regina Costa. Also, TURN supports changing the policy that allows investments in lieu of fines because it hasn't improved service, she said. Don't let AT&T cite limited technician staffing as an excuse to avoid meeting service restoration requirements, Costa added. "AT&T should be required to fully staff its operations and improve the service quality to customers."

The California Broadband and Video Association and its cable members are reviewing the proposal, a CalBroadband spokesperson said. CTIA declined to comment. USTelecom didn't comment.