 Good afternoon Chairman Wessel Senators. My name is Martha Guzman a service I'm a commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission at our last public meeting the Commission voted unanimously to oppose this bill Because we believe the state has an essential role in ensuring access to safe reliable and affordable communications infrastructure regardless of technology For the last two and a half years the Trump FCC has eroded access to affordable fair and equal access to the internet and communication services Yet this bill proposes to eliminate all state jurisdiction and leave the provisions of essential access to the FCC and the free market As you can see in the map that I asked the sergeant to hand to you We know that millions of Californians do not benefit from any competition in the communications marketplace That hundreds of thousands have no high-speed broadband access and a third of Californians 13 million Approximately do not benefit from any competition. This is an oligopoly. It's not a free market This bill prohibits the state from guaranteeing essential and reliability communication services to all Californians Simply because the infrastructure has been upgraded It will eliminate programs to ensure infrastructure access to rural Californians to the death to the disabled and to the poor Within it comes The state is not this this basically is only because they've changed internet protocol services and the state is not interested in ensuring universal access The bill is not about Stiffling innovation or apps like Skype this bill is about Deregulating the companies that own and manage the poles wires and radios in California Companies like Comcast and AT&T not these apps under this bill these companies will be left to their own sense of social Responsibility not government oversight their own decision-making on what the critical issues should be Whether they should participate in universal service programs like lifeline AT&T the state's largest carrier has decreased its participation by 90 percent in the last decade They'll decide which communities receive the next generation of technologies like fiber like 5g like 10g They'll decide whether or how quickly infrastructure is repaired or upgraded in poor communities and rural communities They'll decide whether they address complaints from local governments and your constituents They'll decide where they build wildfire proof and disaster resiliency into their core infrastructure They will decide whether the service they provide is reliable and redundant so all Californians can reach 911 dispatchers at all times They will decide whether they coordinate with the IOUs and local governments to prepare for disasters to respond to disasters To recover from disasters these issues are fundamental They are too important for the state to abandon its role in Fire season is here again and while the state has scrutinized other utilities for the reliability during increasingly Devastating disasters. It has not done so for the communications companies Yet wildfire and other disaster preparedness response Evacuation and recovery hinges on a reliable Communications grid and it's essential for all utilities. It's the backbone for power It's the backbone for water and of course for communications There are too many communities in high fire hazard zones with real concerns that they will be the next Kofi Park or paradise We need to know if their networks have backup power Defensible space and redundant backhaul that there are emergency preparedness plans that local Responders know where their critical infrastructure is to incorporate into their response plans and recovery We must identify Strengthen and protect the vulnerable parts of our networks because bringing in temporary facilities on wheels or wings Will always be too little too late The Commission has looked earnestly to prepare California whether we sought to adopt consumer protections for victims of disasters To require utilities to prepare for disasters in response or to develop protocols for de-energization events And this statute has been the barrier to enacting uniform procedures across all utilities We know that the telecommunications infrastructure is failing We have seen it in our service quality reporting We've saw it in Santa Rosa and in paradise and in our network exam of AT&T and frontiers network from 2010 to 2017 This exam shows whether deliberate or not the AT&T Investments investment policies have favored higher income communities and have thus had a disproportionate impact upon the state's lowest income areas We found a clear inverse relationship between household income and all the principal service quality metrics network hubs With the lowest household incomes have the highest trouble report rates. They have the longest out-of-service Durations they have the lowest percentages of outages cleared within 24 hours The opposite is true for the highest income communities This law has caused harm by preventing access Degrading the universal service programs and preventing preparedness and resiliency. It should sunset Californians need their government to ensure that they have reliable communications and this law prevents the modernization and Development of the protections that all Californians need. Thank you very much