Telecommunications: community isolation outage: notification.

Existing provisions of the Warren-911-Emergency Assistance Act establish the number "911" as the primary emergency telephone number for use in the state and require the provision of enhanced service capable of selective routing, automatic number identification, or automatic location identification. The act requires a telephone corporation serving rural telephone areas that cannot provide enhanced 911 emergency telephone service capable of selective routing, automatic number identification, or automatic location identification to present to the Office of Emergency Services a comprehensive plan detailing a schedule by which their facilities will be converted to be compatible with the enhanced emergency telephone system. This bill would require the Office of Emergency Services, on or before July 1, 2020, to adopt, by regulation, appropriate thresholds for what constitutes a community isolation outage, as provided, and issue a specified notice for that regulation by January 1, 2020. The bill would, upon the adoption of those regulations, require a provider of telecommunications services, as defined, that provides access to 911 service to notify the office, as provided, whenever a community isolation outage limiting the provider's customers' ability to make 911 calls or receive emergency notifications occurs, within 60 minutes of discovering the outage. The bill would make the office responsible for notifying any applicable county office of emergency services, the sheriff of any county, and any public safety answering point affected by the outage. The bill would require the community isolation outage notification to the office to be provided by a medium specified by the office, and to include the telecommunications service provider's contact name, a calling number to be staffed as specified, a description of the estimated area affected, and the approximate communities affected by the outage. The bill would require the telecommunications service provider to notify the office of the estimated time to repair the outage and when service is restored. The bill would require the office, except as provided, to keep the community isolation outage notifications confidential. Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that interest. This bill would make legislative findings to that effect. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.