Hurricane Ian caused large wireless outages in Florida's southwest where the storm made landfall, the FCC said Thursday. The FCC report covered network outage data submitted by communications providers through the disaster information reporting system (DIRS) as of Thursday at noon. The FCC will monitor the situation and is "committed" to ensuring communications are restored, said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel after Thursday’s commissioners' meeting.
Washington, D.C., may want to reconsider its unified approach to handling 911 calls, two D.C. council members said at a Judiciary and Public Safety Committee virtual meeting Wednesday. Members raised alarm with the Office of Unified Communications (OUC) making little progress on recommendations from an audit last year (see 2209090049), and continued reports of dispatching delays due to incorrect addresses and miscommunication and the agency’s alleged failure to give victims’ families an explanation or apology.
Expect California privacy law enforcement to escalate once the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) takes over from the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on Jan. 1, said Carlton Fields attorney Christina Gagnier on a Tuesday webinar. Enforcement will shift from Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), who already has been more aggressive than predecessors, to the new California Privacy Protection Agency, said the privacy lawyer for businesses. One takeaway from Bonta’s recent $1.2 million action against cosmetics store Sephora under the CCPA (see 2208240067) is that “enforcement is industry agnostic,” said Gagnier. “Any company could be a target.” 2023 will be a big year for privacy with other state laws taking effect in Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and Utah, said the same law firm’s Eden Marcu. Note that those are four very different states, said Gagnier, predicting four or five more could enact privacy laws next year. Two-thirds of states have considered comprehensive privacy bills, said Gagnier: States currently in session with privacy bills include Michigan, New York and Ohio. "It's something that you're going to see pop up state by state over the next couple years" until most states have comprehensive laws, she said. Don't bet on a federal law soon, said Gagnier, saying she doesn't expect Congress's American Data Privacy and Protection Act to go anywhere.
Don’t misuse Maine USF to pay for a pole attachments database, a state senator and the cable industry told the Maine Public Utilities Commission. The PUC received mixed reviews by Friday’s deadline, in comments on a staff proposal to split the system’s costs 60-40 between pole owners and attachers, with the attachers and telephone pole owner Consolidated Communications able to recover the cost through state USF.
CTIA stood alone fighting to keep revenue-based contribution for California USF, in comments last week at the California Public Utilities Commission. CPUC members plan to vote Oct. 6 on a proposed decision to assess state public purpose program (PPP) fees based on a carrier’s number of access lines (see 2209060048). The wireless industry continued to staunchly oppose the change, but wireline and cable companies instead sought more implementation time and wording changes.
Florida asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that a state law’s social moderation limits are likely unconstitutional. The state filed a petition for certiorari Wednesday. Tech associations that challenged the Florida law supported SCOTUS review. Since the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas social media law last week, legal observers expect the Supreme Court to hear a case on the constitutionality of state social media laws to resolve the circuit split (see 2209200008).
Shelve Minnesota’s LTD Broadband review until the FCC reverses its rejection of the company’s long-form application for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support, urged the company’s outside counsel Andy Carlson of the Taft firm at a teleconferenced prehearing conference Tuesday. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is considering whether to revoke LTD Broadband’s ETC status while the company challenges the FCC rejection (see 2208240037). Minnesota Assistant Attorney General Kristin Berkland disagreed that the state commission should pause. FCC and PUC proceedings are "interrelated, but they are not interdependent,” with the state agency able to decide ETC designation regardless what the FCC is doing, she said. Carlson said LTD’s actual buildout will be proof it's qualified to deploy broadband. "That's great,” said Berkland, “but ideally you want to know in advance whether a company can do those things that it says it can do because it is incredibly difficult to claw back funding from a company that overrepresents its ability.” Minnesota PUC Administrative Law Judge Jim LaFave said he will decide later how to proceed. In South Dakota, the state telecom association urged the Public Utility Commission Sept. 2 to deny LTD’s request to suspend a proceeding to rehear its denied ETC application. The PUC should instead close docket TC21-001, it said. That request remains pending.
An Arkansas law doesn't clearly give municipalities the right to sue for franchise fees from Netflix and Hulu, a federal appeals judge suggested Tuesday. At oral argument teleconferenced Tuesday from St. Louis, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Stras suggested Ashdown and other Arkansas localities might have to ask the legislature to update the Arkansas Video Service Act (VSA) to address their concerns that streaming video companies don’t pay franchise fees.
A federal court disagreed with constitutional arguments to dismiss a class-action lawsuit brought under the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act. In an order Thursday in Borges v. SmileDirectClub (case 1:21-cv-23011), the U.S. District Court in Southern Florida denied a motion to dismiss by the defendant, which argued that FTSA violated the First Amendment as a content-based speech restriction and defied the 14th Amendment’s due process clause because the law fails to define what is an “automated system for the selection or dialing of telephone numbers.” Judge Melissa Damian disagreed. The state law isn’t subject to strict scrutiny under the First Amendment because it regulates only commercial speech, said the judge, citing May’s decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court on a Florida social media law (see 2205230049). FTSA survives intermediate scrutiny because the commercial speech at issue isn’t misleading or related to unlawful activity, and because the law is narrowly tailored and serves a substantial government interest of protecting consumer privacy, Damian said. The court isn’t persuaded that FTSA is unconstitutionally vague, the judge said. “The Court finds that the absence of a definition of ‘automated system’ in Section 8(a) of the FTSA does not render that provision unconstitutionally vague when, as here, Defendant’s alleged conduct is clearly encompassed by the statute.” SmileDirectClub should answer the complaint by Sept. 30, Damian said. A tsunami of telemarketing lawsuits is expected as more states like Florida add restrictions beyond what’s in the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (see 2206100049).
Businesses will continue to seek a way forward on a concerning, soon-to-expire exemption in California's privacy law for employee and business-to-business (B2B) data, a California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber) official told us Friday. Many privacy lawyers are warning businesses about the carve-out sunsetting at year-end due to the legislature failing to pass an extension. Starting Jan. 1, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) is “really no longer just a consumer law,” said Sheppard Mullin’s Julia Kadish in an interview.