Iowa Utilities Board Chair Geri Huser pushed back on wireless industry concerns that the state commission is angling to expand its telecom authority through draft statutory changes that the IUB plans to propose to the legislature. At the board’s virtual workshop Monday, Lumen and wireless officials repeated some of their legal and policy concerns from written comments about possibly adding wireless and interconnected VoIP to the state definition of telecom service provider (see 2112010048).
Washington state agencies are reviewing a Seattle-area 911 outage lasting more than an hour Thursday, officials told us Friday. “A detailed root cause analysis has already been initiated by” ESInet provider Comtech “and we will be provided updates during the process," emailed Washington State Enhanced 911 Coordinator Adam Wasserman. Washington Utilities and Transportation staff will open an investigation, a spokesperson said. The 911 call delivery issue affected the western part of the state for about 90 minutes Thursday, said 911 Program Manager Ben Breier in King County, which includes Seattle. Seattle police Thursday tweeted at 3:35 p.m. PST that 911 was down; at 5:31 p.m., it said service was restored. King County had “intermittent outages for mobile and landline users,” though text-to-911 service wasn’t affected, the county tweeted at 4:11 p.m. local time. The county said at 4:54 that 911 was “being restored” and “returning to normal.” Seattle sent a wireless alert. Comtech didn’t comment Friday.
Areas where some Rural Digital Opportunity Fund winners challenge proposed California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) support due to possible overlap with RDOF support “have not been awarded any funds by the FCC, nor approved by the FCC to receive awards,” a California Public Utilities Commission spokesperson emailed Wednesday. Commissioners may vote Dec. 16 on several contested draft resolutions to award CASF support, plus a separate proposal to deny eligible telecom carrier (ETC) status to LTD Broadband, one company challenging proposed grants (see 2112080046). The CPUC can't comment specifically on agenda items, said the spokesperson: “The FCC requires companies to obtain a high-cost [ETC] designation that covers its winning bid areas. In California, the CPUC designates ETCs. The CPUC has been working with the companies to make determinations on each ETC application. The FCC is simultaneously evaluating the same providers, along with scores of others across the country.”
Federal departments are applying lessons learned from NTIA’s broadband technology opportunities program (BTOP) and the Rural Utilities Service’s broadband initiatives program (BIP) to new infrastructure funding, officials said at an FCBA webinar Thursday. Georgia, Virginia and Minnesota broadband officials said they will be ready for NTIA’s broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program.
Ohio legislators amended a comprehensive privacy bill by unanimous voice vote at a House Government Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday. Rep. Rick Carfagna (R) said the new version of HB-376 is “more nuanced” about how it classifies businesses, differentiating between data controller at the front end and processors in the backend. The amended bill would preempt local privacy rules, give consumers a right to opt out of targeted advertisements and align various definitions more closely with other states’ bills, Carfagna said. Businesses wouldn’t have to respond to requests for pseudonymous data, he said. The lawmaker said he worked on the amendment with industry groups including the State Privacy and Security Coalition and BSA|The Software Alliance. The Ohio Association for Justice (OAJ), a trial lawyers group, and the American Civil Liberties Union Ohio opposed HB-376. Enforcement only by the state attorney general isn’t enough to protect Ohioans, said OAJ Trustee Curtis Fifner: The bill should allow private lawsuits, at least when the AG decides not to prosecute a claim. The measure is full of “exploitable loopholes” allowing businesses to “circumvent” privacy protections, said ACLU Ohio Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels: it gives consumers a “right to know” but not to act, he said. Ohio bills typically get three hearings in committee before going to the floor; Wednesday’s was the third.
A California fight is heating up over proposed broadband subsidies that the California Public Utilities Commission might award next week to carriers including Frontier Communications and Race Communications. Etheric, GeoLinks, LTD Broadband and others in recent weeks opposed proposed California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) resolutions up for vote at the CPUC’s Dec. 16 meeting because they said the projects overlap with places where they won Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support. Commissioners may vote at the meeting on a proposed decision that could prevent LTD from qualifying for RDOF support in California.
Judges raised many questions about practical effects of the FCC's January changes to over-the-air reception devices (OTARD) rules, at oral argument Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The court heard Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and four individuals’ challenge of FCC amendments that appellants said could lead to large-scale deployment of carrier equipment in residential areas despite alleged local harms (see 2110140031). Since the commission's goal was to reduce deployment barriers, said Judge Patricia Millett, “it seems to me the FCC itself anticipated that this was going to produce substantial proliferation of these antennas.”
ISP associations asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeals to require their brief by Feb. 23 on New York’s appeal of a lower court rejecting the state’s broadband affordability law, in letters Monday in case 21-1975 from the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association, New York State Telecommunications Association, CTIA, USTelecom and NTCA. U.S. District Court in Central Islip, New York, temporarily blocked the state law earlier this year, ruling ISPs would likely succeed on conflict and field preemption arguments (see 2107230044). Last week, in an amicus brief, California, Illinois, 20 other states and the District of Columbia said they “seek to defend New York’s sovereign right to exercise its police powers against Plaintiffs’ unwarranted assertions of federal preemption.” Amici “regularly exercise their sovereign authority to enact and enforce numerous laws applicable to broadband providers and other online businesses,” including laws “aimed at securing their residents’ access to vital goods and services,” they said. “There is nothing about the Internet that necessitates a departure from that normal state of affairs, and certainly nothing that warrants it in the absence of clear direction from Congress.” In other amici filings, the Benton Institute and Public Knowledge said the New York law is “a targeted and state-specific regulatory response to the problem of the digital divide.” Access Now, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and others said federal “programs, while being helpful and effective, have not fully solved" the "broadband affordability problem.” The Greenlining Institute said states “have long played an essential role in regulating both interstate and intrastate communications, both as an exercise of their inherent sovereign police powers and within a federal statutory framework that leaves room to adapt communications law and policies to local concerns.” The district court's field preemption claim, if affirmed, "would invalidate vital state laws regulating areas of traditional local concern -- including consumer protection, public health, and public safety,” wrote seven internet law professors including Harvard Law School’s Lawrence Lessig and Stanford Law School’s Barbara van Schewick. It would “leave both the FCC and the states without regulatory authority, leaving Americans wholly unprotected from harms by interstate communications providers,” they said.
A landowners' challenge to a Virginia easements law is gaining attention as other states consider similar laws to make it easier for power companies to add broadband lines to land where they have electric facilities. Virginia’s 2020 law allows utilities to proceed without permission or additional compensation to landowners. The U.S. District Court in Charlottesville dismissed constitutional claims against Virginia in Grano v. Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) last month, but the landowners haven’t given up and are considering appeal, said their lawyer Joshua Baker of Waldo and Lyle, in an interview.
Texas will appeal a U.S. district court pausing the state's social media law, a spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Thursday. Internet associations that challenged the law expected Texas to appeal Wednesday’s preliminary injunction, their officials said in interviews Thursday. Those same groups earlier won preliminary injunction -- also under appeal -- against a similar Florida law, but NetChoice Policy Counsel Chris Marchese told us a “very high risk” remains that more states will try to regulate social media.