Federal Communications Commission

CNG Energy Service Corp. appointed Jeff Johnson senior vice president of integrated energy management. Jerome H. Dortmans was appointed vice president of financial trading and risk management.

Alan Wells was named senior vice president of finance and CFO for MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. and its subsidiary MidAmerican Energy. Wells replaces Phil Lindner who announced his retirement. Wells also will continue to serve as president of the company's nonutility subsidiaries.

Fred D. Hafer assumed office as chairman of the Pennsylvania Electric Association.

WHETHER YOU CALL IT "DEREGULATION" OR "re-regulation," the promised move to competition does not mean less regulation - at least not any time soon.

WITH DIRECT ACCESS SCHEDULED TO BEGIN ON Jan. 1, 1998, California regulators are moving quickly to set up their long-considered policies on electric restructuring. The restructuring actions touch nearly every aspect of electric regulation in the state from financing decisions and rate design to the sale of generating assets and monitoring new capital additions.

In addition, restructuring has affected ongoing regulatory activities such as the development of performance-based rate making plans and pricing and rate designs for large incumbent utilities.

(And why power plant buyers may follow suit.)

"WINNERS' CURSE" IS IMPORTANT TO THE UTILITY ASSET AUCTIONS. Winners' Curse is the tendency for the "rookies" and the wide-eyed visionaries to overbid in auctions with uncertain valuations.

The spectrum auctions at the Federal Communications Commission reveal the Winners' Curse even in the more "successful" rounds, despite the agency's elaborate precautions.

FCC's 14 spectrum auctions booked almost $23 billion in license fees (em almost $10 billion in broadband personal communications services (PCS).

When the fanfare dies down, winners face the same challenge as with any new start-up but may enjoy more options than incumbent licensees.

The Federal Communications Commission's auctions of spectrum should concern two types of energy utilities: those who participate in the auctions and those who don't.

Initially, these auctions were viewed as a spectacular new regulatory tool (em able to raise billions of dollars for the public, without troubling the overburdened taxpayer. As of late, however, a dark side has emerged. Bidders have cried fraud.

In a long-awaited opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled that the Federal Communications Commission exceeded its authority in approving pricing regulations to open the telecommunications local exchange market to competition.

The court upheld, however, major portions of the FCC regulations governing the duty owned by incumbent local exchange carriers to provide access to the public switched network for new market entrants.

My electric company, Potomac Electric Power Co., has announced a joint venture with RCN Corp. of Princeton, N.J., to offer local and long-distance telephone service to callers in Washington, D.C., and nearby areas, plus cable television and high-speed connections to the Internet. With stockholder money, PEPCO would compete head-on against Bell Atlantic, which won approval from the Federal Communications Commission on Aug. 14 for its $25-billion merger with NYNEX.

Reporting the story, The Washington Post quoted PEPCO President John M.

Nearly a year and a half after passage of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, real competition has yet to emerge in Indiana in local telephone markets, according to a report issued by the Indiana Regulatory Commission.

Nevertheless, the U.R.C. says it anticipates making competitive choices available to local consumers in the coming months.

State regulators in New Jersey, New York and California have recently approved mergers of local exchange and long-distance telephone carriers operating within those states that are part of larger interstate and international consolidations.

NYNEX/Bell Atlantic. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has approved the merger of two major local-exchange carrier holding companies, NYNEX Corp. and Bell Atlantic Corp.

Signaling victory over one of the more complex issues in the move to competition in the local telephone market, regulators in Connecticut and New York have adopted rate plans for unbundled interconnection services offered by incumbent local exchange carriers.

Both states also recently approved the wholesale discount rate that the LECs must apply to existing services when offering them for resale by competitive companies. See Re AT&T Communications of New York, Inc., 173 PUR4th 274 (N.Y.P.S.C. 1996); Re So. New England Tel. Co., Docket No. 95-06-17, March 25, 1997 (Conn.D.P.U.C.).