States are responding to reports Frontier Communications might seek bankruptcy protection in the next month, said commissioners and other officials from five states in Frontier’s territory. All have ongoing or recent probes of the carrier’s service quality. Frontier has a public service “obligation to serve in their home territory, even when it’s unprofitable, even when it’s inconvenient,” said West Virginia Public Service Commission Chairman Charlotte Lane in an interview.
Washington state’s privacy bill cleared the Senate and is to be considered by a House panel Friday. The Senate voted 46-1 Friday for SB-6281. The House Innovation, Technology and Economic Development (ITED) Committee scheduled a hearing on the bill for Friday at 10 a.m. PST. A week before Senate passage, the ITED committee cleared a similar bill, while noting more work to do before final passage (see 2002070051). The House voted 96-0 Sunday for HB-2400 requiring privacy assessments of state agencies. Monday, the House voted 70-28 for HB-2396 on internet bots and 87-11 for HB-1503 on registering data brokers. Those three bills go to the Senate.
Maine should fight a lawsuit by national ISP associations challenging a state ISP privacy law, said the American Civil Liberties Union and an ex-FCC official Tuesday. CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom and the American Cable Association sued Maine Friday in the U.S. District Court of Maine, before the regulations take effect July 1. Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed the bill in June countering Congress' 2017 repeal of 2016 FCC broadband privacy rules, after bipartisan votes in the legislature (see 1906060050).
Eyes are on California's attorney general after his New York counterpart said she won't appeal last week's court decision denying states' challenge against T-Mobile/Sprint. T-Mobile's stock price was up after it was upgraded by UBS, while other analysts looked for bigger implications from last week's decision (see 2002110026).
The wireless industry is making another push for small-cells laws, after 28 states and Puerto Rico enacted them over the past four years. Remaining states should “take notice that they might be left behind if they don’t get with the program,” though the wireless industry's goal isn't all 50, said Wireless Infrastructure Association CEO Jonathan Adelstein in an interview. Representing skeptical municipalities, NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner told us she thinks industry will have a harder time persuading remaining states because such laws aren’t proven to drive deployment.
A New York legislator defended using satellite broadband to cover some remote areas in the state broadband program. At a budget hearing livestreamed Thursday from Albany, Assemblyman Billy Jones (D) complained that his upstate constituents aren’t satisfied with satellite broadband and want better cellphone coverage. Eric Gertler, acting commissioner at the New York Department of Economic Development, replied that 25 Mbps satellite helps fill in gaps where laying fiber is too expensive. "We can't always do fiber” because the return on investment “is just prohibitive,” he said. ROI is also a challenge for spreading wireless coverage, but to help, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is proposing in the budget to ease the local permitting process for wireless infrastructure (see 2001230043), Gertler said.
T-Mobile and Sprint urged the California Public Utilities Commission Tuesday to complete its review of their proposed deal and issue a recommended decision by Feb. 25 so the commission can vote on the transaction at its March 26 meeting. The carriers emailed assigned Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen and Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer a copy of Judge Victor Marrero's decision approving the combination in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (see 2002110026). “The applications have now been pending before this Commission for more than 18 months, and the second round of hearings and associated briefing were completed nearly two months ago,” wrote carriers’ attorney Suzanne Toller of Davis Wright in CPUC docket A.18-07-011. “Continued delay in completing the Commission’s review in this already-lengthy proceeding would be highly prejudicial to Joint Applicants.” The SDNY decision increases pressure on Rechtschaffen and Bemesderfer to propose a decision soon, former CPUC and FCC Commissioner Rachelle Chong told us Wednesday at the NARUC Winter Summit in Washington. She works with the California Emerging Technology Fund, which signed a pact last April with the carriers to support the deal (see 1904080041). Chong doubts California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, one of the Democratic AGs who unsuccessfully challenged the transaction at SDNY, can still weigh in at CPUC because the record is closed, she said. There's momentum from federal reviews and the court decision for approving T-Mobile/Sprint, but Chong expects CPUC to follow its historical practice of applying many conditions, she said. The Utility Reform Network and other consumer advocates disagreed Wednesday that the court decision means the CPUC must speed up. "This Commission must use the record before it, developed through significant discovery, thousands of pages of testimony, and hours of hearings, to come to its conclusions," TURN Managing Director-San Diego Christine Mailloux wrote the ALJ and commissioner. "While the Commission should not bow to external pressure to hasten the pace of its review, Joint Advocates believe that the Commission could quickly come to a finding that this merger is not in the public interest."
“Four hours is not enough” for battery backup at wireless cellsites, since last year’s public safety power shutoffs lasted two to eight days, California Public Utilities Commission member Genevieve Shiroma said Wednesday. CPUC is looking into the issue, she replied to our question on a resiliency panel at the NARUC winter meeting. For the state commission, “the wildfire emergency has really put an exclamation point on the importance of communications and broadband during an emergency,” said former FCC and CPUC Commissioner Rachelle Chong in an interview.
Universal Service Administrative Co. sees “good momentum” on the Lifeline national verifier after a rocky start that state regulators criticized last year, USAC Vice President-Lifeline Michelle Garber told NARUC. Garber told Telecom Committee members about progress connecting state databases and refining enrollment and reverification processes.
With impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump completed, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker hopes to move bipartisan bills on broadband mapping, net neutrality and Huawei, the Mississippi Republican said in a Monday keynote speech at the NARUC Winter Policy Summit. NARUC President Brandon Presley announced members of a freshly minted broadband task force (see 1911270024).