Telecommunications: emergencies and natural disasters: critical communications infrastructure.

Existing law requires a provider of telecommunications services, as defined, that provides access to 911 service to notify the Office of Emergency Services, 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. Existing law makes 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. Existing law requires the telecommunications service provider to notify the office of the estimated time to repair the outage and when service is restored. This bill would additionally require a telecommunication service provider to notify the office of critical telecommunications infrastructure out of service or experiencing functionality failures that would prevent the transmission of an emergency notification or 911 call and the estimated range of any mobile telephony service base transceiver station towers identified as damaged or experiencing functionality failures. The bill would require each provider of telecommunications service, to the extent feasible, to provide real-time information to a county office of emergency services upon identifying outages or functionality failures that could impede the transmission of an emergency alert or notification. The bill would require a telecommunication service provider, on an annual basis, to provide the office with the name or names and contact information for an official representative of the provider, who has the knowledge and technical expertise necessary to participate in state and local emergency operations response for a declared disaster or emergency. The bill would require the office to ensure that the names and contact information reported by a telecommunications service provider are transmitted to each county office of emergency services. Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including telephone corporations. Existing law requires the commission, in consultation with the Office of Emergency Services, to identify the need for telecommunications service systems not on customers' premises to have backup electricity to enable the telecommunications networks to function, and to enable customers to contact a public safety answering point operator during an electrical outage, to determine performance criteria for backup systems, and to determine whether specified best practices for backup systems have been implemented by telecommunications service providers operating in California. This bill would require the commission to (1) evaluate the extent to which telecommunications network failures impacted the transmission of emergency alerts and notifications, (2) direct each provider of telecommunications service to submit an inventory of critical telecommunications infrastructure in the provider's network on an annual basis, and (3) provide that inventory to the Office of Emergency Services for inclusion in statewide emergency planning activities. The bill would require the commission and the office to keep the provided inventory confidential. Under existing law, a violation of an order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime. Because a violation of an order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission implementing the bill's requirements would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. 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. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.