BILL ANALYSIS
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 1375|
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THIRD READING
Bill No: SB 1375
Author: Price (D)
Amended: 8/2/10
Vote: 21
SENATE ENERGY, U.&C. COMMITTEE : 10-0, 4/20/10
AYES: Padilla, Dutton, Corbett, Florez, Kehoe, Lowenthal,
Oropeza, Simitian, Strickland, Wright
NO VOTE RECORDED: Cox
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : Senate Rule 28.8
SENATE FLOOR : 35-0, 6/1/10
AYES: Aanestad, Alquist, Ashburn, Calderon, Cedillo,
Cogdill, Corbett, Correa, Cox, Denham, DeSaulnier,
Ducheny, Dutton, Florez, Hancock, Harman, Hollingsworth,
Huff, Kehoe, Leno, Liu, Lowenthal, Negrete McLeod,
Padilla, Pavley, Price, Romero, Runner, Simitian,
Steinberg, Strickland, Wolk, Wright, Wyland, Yee
NO VOTE RECORDED: Oropeza, Walters, Wiggins, Vacancy,
Vacancy
ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 62-7, 08/16/10 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT : Telephone corporations: residential telephone
service: 911
calls
SOURCE : AT&T
Verizon
Frontier Communications
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DIGEST : This bill requires local telephone corporations
to provide every subscriber of tariffed residential basic
exchange service, rather than every existing and newly
installed residential telephone connection, with access to
911 emergency service.
Assembly Amendments allow a local telephone corporation to
provide access to 911 emergency services for at least 120
days after disconnection of residential basic phone service
for nonpayment of any delinquent account, instead of
indefinitely, and (2) allow a telephone corporation to
disconnect any line in existence on January 1, 2011, that
provides access to 911 emergency services with no customer
account attached for that line, if a 90-day notice is
provided that contains specified information.
ANALYSIS : According to the author's office, this bill
aims to update the requirement that all California
residences have access to 911 emergency service in
recognition of the increase in telephone subscribers who
are abandoning landline service in favor of wireless or
other technologies.
Access to 911 - Current law enacted in 1994 requires all
landline telephone corporations, to the extent permitted by
existing technology or facilities, to provide every
residential telephone connection with access to 911
emergency service regardless of whether an account has been
established. The law prohibits any corporation from
terminating this "warm line" service for nonpayment of any
delinquent account. The intent of this law is to ensure
that people can always call 911 from their home even when
they just move in and regular phone service has not started
yet or when regular service has been discontinued because
they cannot afford to pay their telephone bill. The law
also requires telephone corporations to inform subscribers
of the availability of warm line service in a manner
determined by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
Benefit and Cost of Warm Line Service - While the warm line
requirement is intended to enhance public safety, no data
or reports of actual emergency calls being placed on warm
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lines have been identified. Telephone corporations, 911
service administrators, the PUC, and the State of
California 911 Emergency Communications Office have been
asked to provide this information, including any data or
reports related to an apparent surge in false or "phantom"
911 calls in southern California that peaked in early 2009.
A state 911 report dated July 2009 reports that 25 million
calls are placed in California each year, and about
two-thirds of those calls are made on wireless telephones.
Calls to 911 on warm lines are a tiny fraction of all 911
calls. The State of California 911 Emergency
Communications Office, which is within the Office of the
State Chief Information Officer, reports the following
total number of 911 calls transmitted on warm lines
statewide for recent months:
1.March 2010 - 11,039
2.April 2010 - 13,728
It is unknown, however, how many of these were phantom
calls or were made by a person in a real emergency because
that requires examining data from individual PSAPs.
These 2010 numbers are higher than the numbers of calls
made on warm lines identified in a PUC study in 2009, which
found the following number of calls on warm lines
statewide:
1.January 2009 - 8,602
2.February 2009 - 10,208
3.March 2009 - 9,155
The PUC study tried to determine how many calls were
phantom or real by examining dispatch records at PSAPs.
Although dispatch records did not reveal conclusively what
calls were real people calling 911 in a real emergency, the
PUC study was able to draw the following conclusions:
1.A majority (58 percent) of the warm lines generating 911
calls did so only once, confirming that warm lines per se
are not problem lines.
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2.Excessive repetitive calling from the same line to 911
accounted for almost 6,000 false calls a month but was
limited to only 569 problem warm lines.
3.At least three percent of calls made on warm lines
resulted in a transfer to a secondary PSAP for fire or
emergency medical response, indicating these were not
phantom calls. This percentage of calls does not include
calls dispatched by primary PSAPs for police,
police/fire, or other emergencies that require law
enforcement presence.
Thus, the limited data available on 911 calls made on warm
lines reveals that some warm line calls are phantom and
some are calls made in a real emergency.
Note: The
findings section of the bill could give the impression that
most call on
warm lines are phantom according to the Senate Energy,
Utilities, and Communications staff. An amendment making
reference to the PUC findings could clarify that
impression.
Telephone corporations (and their ratepayers) incur the
cost of maintaining the facilities for warm lines and the
telephone number associated with each line that registers
at the local PSAP if a 911 call is transmitted on the line.
The companies claim that these costs have increased
because of rapid growth in the number of warm lines as
subscribers discontinue landline service and transfer to
wireless, cable, or VoIP service. The PUC reports that the
total number of landline access lines in California has
decreased from 24.77 million in 2001 to 20.25 million in
2008. When customers abandon wireline service, the wire to
the residence remains as a warm line. The total number of
warm lines statewide is now at about 2 million, up from
about 150,000 in 2005.
The telecom industry is working on language to remove the
requirement to maintain the embedded base of about two
million warm lines. Some PSAPs want LECs to be required to
keep existing warm lines if the prior subscriber was
disconnected for nonpayment, but AT&T claims its records do
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not allow it to determine retrospectively if the reason for
disconnect was nonpayment.
AT&T Complaint Case - Current law generally requires
telephone corporations to maintain warm lines indefinitely.
In 2005, the Utility Consumers' Action Network filed a
complaint with the PUC challenging AT&T's then-existing
policy of providing warm line service for only180 days
after billed service was discontinued. The PUC found that
AT&T's policy violated the warm line requirement and
imposed a penalty of about $1.7 million. AT&T appealed the
PUC decision, and on May 24, a California Court of Appeal
upheld the penalty and nearly all of the PUC's findings.
The court held that the PUC erred in finding that AT&T
violated the warm line requirement for new residential
units when there was no request for warm line service and
in finding that AT&T violated customer notice requirements
but concluded that these errors did not require any
reduction in the penalty
"Phantom" 911 Calls - Telephone corporations and the 911
County Coordinator Task Force report that PSAPs sometimes
receive 911 calls that are triggered by damaged or aging
lines, weather, or other causes. Not knowing whether there
is a real emergency, public safety officials respond to the
homes where these calls originate, thereby draining local
government resources and making those responders
unavailable for other public safety duties. They claim
that the incidence of phantom 911 calls is increasing as
customers abandon landline service and the number of
existing warm lines continues to grow.
Related Legislation
AB 424 (Torres) establishes an education campaign to
instruct the public on the appropriate use of the 911
emergency number system. This bill is on the Assembly
Floor.
AB 2545 ( De La Torre) creating parity in the funding of
the 911 emergency response system between users of
post-paid service and prepaid service. This bill is on the
Assembly Floor.
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FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes
Local: No
SUPPORT : (Verified 6/28/10 - unable to reverify)
AT&T (co-source)
Verizon (co-source)
Frontier Communication (co-source)
California Association of Competitive Telecommunications
Companies California Cable & Telecommunications Association
California Communications Association
California Professional Firefighters
Charter Communications
Comcast
COX Communications
Peace Officers Research Association of California
SureWest
Time Warner Cable
OPPOSITION : (Verified 6/28/10 - unable to reverify)
911 County Coordinator Task Force
CALNENA
TURN
Various Communication Operations Supervisors
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : AT&T indicates this bill is
designed to find a solution to the problems created by
aging warm lines and phantom 911 calls. A warm line is a
telephone connection for which there is no customer
account, but which allows a person to make an outbound call
to 911.
AT&T states, "Current law, Public Utilities Code Section
2883, requires local telephone companies to provide
telephone connections with access to 911 emergency service
- to the extent it is permitted by existing technology.
Section 2883 also prohibits disconnecting warm line service
for nonpayment of an account. Due to changes in the
telecommunications industry, however, what was intended as
a public safety benefit has become a public safety burden
that also imposes costs on the state, local governments and
companies. Today, customers switch carriers with relative
ease, taking their phone numbers with them and receiving
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911 service from whomever is their current provider. No
company owns the customer or the telephone connection
inside the house. Today, a warm line provisioned in 1995
could be connected but the customer has no landline phone
to plug into it because they have gone all wireless. Or,
the warm line could be connected only to the outside of the
house because the jack and inside wiring now is being used
by a new service provider the customer has chosen. Or, the
warm line could be connected to an abandoned building. Or,
the warm line could be not connected to anything at all
because the building no longer exists and no one called to
tell the warm line provider. Once a customer leaves the
original company providing the warm line, there is no
practical way to determine what happens to that warm line
down the road. A warm line could remain unused for years.
These unconnected or duplicative warm lines provide no
benefit, but due to water, weather and animals they can
short, sending a "phantom" 911 call to a public safety
agency. While the public safety agency knows that a 911
call is coming from a warm line, it does not know if it is
a phantom 911 call or a real one - without expending 911
operator time and dispatching law enforcement officers.
Answering and checking out a phantom 911 calls can delay a
response to a real emergency thereby posing a public safety
risk."
ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION : The California Chapter National
Emergency Number Association, representing PSAP officials,
are concerned that the bill will lead to a diminution of
911 service. The Utility Reform Network (TURN) argues that
the current system, in providing 911 access to every
housing unit in the state, should not be abandoned. TURN
contends that the telephone companies have historically
been reimbursed for maintaining warm lines yet argue that
warm line service is no longer reliable-a situation TURN
believes would violate the companies' statutory
requirements. TURN suggests that, in lieu of this
legislation, the PUC first re-examine the issue of whether
maintaining universal 911 access through the landline
system is still a worthwhile policy in light of
technological change.
In response, with respect to the issue of warm line
maintenance being covered in the carriers' rate structure,
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AT&T indicates that the initial warm line requirement did
not address cost recovery, and that its line rate was set
by the PUC in 1995 at half its identified costs, the
development of which predated the warm line requirement.
Moreover, AT&T states that basic service rates remained
essentially frozen until 2008. AT&T argues that the
original warm line requirement did not contemplate two
million such lines, and growth to four million within the
next few years.
ASSEMBLY FLOOR :
AYES: Adams, Anderson, Bill Berryhill, Tom Berryhill,
Block, Blumenfield, Bradford, Brownley, Buchanan,
Caballero, Carter, Chesbro, Conway, Cook, Coto, De La
Torre, De Leon, DeVore, Eng, Fletcher, Fong, Fuentes,
Fuller, Furutani, Gaines, Galgiani, Garrick, Gatto,
Gilmore, Hagman, Hall, Harkey, Hayashi, Hernandez, Hill,
Huber, Huffman, Jeffries, Knight, Lieu, Logue, Bonnie
Lowenthal, Ma, Mendoza, Miller, Nestande, Niello,
Nielsen, Norby, Portantino, Ruskin, Saldana, Silva,
Smyth, Solorio, Audra Strickland, Swanson, Torlakson,
Torrico, Tran, Villines, John A. Perez
NOES: Ammiano, Arambula, Beall, Feuer, Salas, Torres,
Yamada
NO VOTE RECORDED: Bass, Blakeslee, Charles Calderon, Davis,
Evans, Jones, Monning, Nava, V. Manuel Perez, Skinner,
Vacancy
DLW:nl 8/17/10 Senate Floor Analyses
SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE
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