The California Public Utilities Commission listened to more than 200 phone comments Tuesday over their consideration to release AT&T from its obligation to serve as the state’s carrier of last resort.

The carrier of last resort designation, or COLR, is a cornerstone of utility regulation. It obligates a carrier to serve all customers within their territory no matter where they live, even in places with spotty cellphone service.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.