Sandoval Hopeful for States to Gain NORS Access
A backer of allowing states access to the FCC network outage reporting system said she's hopeful it will be approved by the commission, while an agency official said commissioners haven't focused on whether to approve the draft NORS order. FCC…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Chairman Tom Wheeler said at a NARUC conference last week that he and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn voted for the order since he circulated it Dec. 10 (see 1502170051). Commissioners Mike O’Rielly, Ajit Pai and Rosenworcel hadn't voted, said Wheeler. FCC officials didn’t express any concerns during meetings on allowing states access to NORS, said the backer to such access, California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine Sandoval. Rather, the agency likely hasn’t acted on the order because “of a combination of other business and priorities,” she said in an interview. That gibed with what a commission official told us. Sandoval is hopeful the order will eventually be approved, she said after meeting with FCC officials including Wheeler’s Chief of Staff Ruth Milkman and aide Gigi Sohn, and Clyburn and Rosenworcel (see 1502200026). “I didn’t hear any issues raised against it,” she said. “I think there’s an increasing cognizance of the roles states play” in emergencies after Superstorm Sandy and April's multistate 911 outage, Sandoval told us. The database includes detailed real-time information about outages, which will let states deal with emergencies, and later do assessments to deal with future emergencies, she said. NARUC passed a resolution Feb. 17 urging the agency to give states access to the database (see 1502180058). An FCC spokesman didn't comment.