Next Meeting

IEEE San Francisco Communications Society and the Distinguished Lecture Tour Presents:

"FCC Broadband Regulation"

Speaker: Helen Mickiewicz, California Public Utilities Commission
 
Date: Tuesday, March 16th, 2010, 6:30PM
Location: The California Public Utilities Commission, 505 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco
Website: www.ieee.org/sfcomsoc
RSVP: timryan@ieee.org

ABSTRACT
The FCC is the federal agency which presently is overseeing the deployment and delivery of broadband services. At present, a federal court case, involving Comcast, has cast into question the extent to which the FCC can regulate broadband services and/or their providers. This presentation will describe the FCC - it's political make-up and organizational structure.

I will discuss the history of the FCC's jurisdictional relationship to the states, providing examples of litigation over jurisdiction, and then of cooperation between the states and the FCC which produced a positive result for consumers. Against the background of the ongoing jurisdictional tension, I will discuss the present focus on broadband regulation. Who should? Who shouldn't? Should anyone?

Bio:
Helen M. Mickiewicz is an Assistant General Counsel in the Legal Division of the California Public Utilities Commission.  Since joining the Commission legal staff in 1986, she has practiced exclusively in telecommunications, served as a commissioner’s legal advisor, and has participated in developing California telecommunications policy. 

She has represented CPUC staff in a variety of administrative proceedings before the CPUC itself, and has
represented the CPUC in federal court proceedings implementing and applying various provisions of the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act.

She also represents the CPUC in rulemaking proceedings at the Federal Communications Commission, and has testified for the CPUC before the California Legislature.   

Ms. Mickiewicz obtained her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and is a graduate of UCLA Law School.  She is a member of the
American Bar Association, and has spoken on telecommunications law before academic groups, in public forums, and at telecommunications industry and legal conferences.  Before attending law school, she worked for several years as a broadcast journalist, primarily in public radio. For the past 15 years,

Ms. Mickiewicz has been the Legal Division liaison to the CPUC’s Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program, and in that
capacity, has advised the DDTP Advisory Committees on legal issues relevant to the operation of the Program.  From 2001 through 2007,
she served as a CPUC alternate delegate to the North American Numbering Council, an FCC advisory board on numbering issues. She has
served as president of the Conference of California Public Utility Counsel in 1999. 

She is a co-founder of Women in Telecommunications,
a non-profit networking organization for women in the telecommunications industry, and served for several years on the WiT Board of Directors.