7. Emergency Preparedness Addressed in a Separate Proceeding

Several parties, including CALTEL, ask us to preserve the existing copper network because it is more reliable in a disaster. We are examining the issue of availability of backup power for telephone service over fiber, in R.07-04-015, our Rulemaking on the Commission's Own Motion into Reliability Standards for Telecommunications Emergency Backup Power Systems and Emergency Notification Systems Pursuant to Assembly Bill 2393 (Backup Power Rulemaking). That proceeding is the appropriate forum to consider issues of reliability and emergency preparedness on fiber networks.

Moreover, to the extent that an ILEC has transferred a customer to its fiber-based service, the underlying copper loop cannot be easily used in the event of an emergency. Once Verizon switches a group of customers on a particular copper facility to FiOS, for example, it removes or disables the copper drop to make room for the fiber facility, subject to replacement on customer request. In the event of an emergency, therefore, the customer may not easily switch back to copper-based service for emergency purposes without a visit from a Verizon service technician. Further, electric outages often result from cable cuts that also affect telecommunications wiring, so power outages also sever the copper connection to the home.⁵⁶ In view of these facts, it is far from clear that redundancy in copper-fiber networks is the best way to ensure emergency preparedness. Access to wireless phones and computer phones via Wi-Fi already provides significant redundancy.⁵⁷

Thus, we do not find that the emergency preparedness issues, standing alone, merit rules prohibiting copper removal absent evidence that ILECs are currently engaged in such removal on a large scale.

⁵⁶ Verizon Opening Comments at 38, and Declaration (App. B), ¶ 29; AT&T Opening Comments at 32.

⁵⁷ Since 2001, California's largest ILECs have lost 25% of their embedded wireline customer base to broadband DSL and cable, as well as substitution of VoIP and wireless for wireline voice services. Wireless subscribership was 30.2 million in June 2007, or 82.7 percent of the state's population. Further, it is estimated that there are currently between 900,000 and 1.2 mission VoIP subscribers in CA. See Residential Telephone Subscribership and Universal Telephone Service Report to the Legislature, California Public Utilities Commission (June 2008), at 8-15.