Universal Service Administrative Co. hasn't de-enrolled any Lifeline users who failed the national verifier's automatic reverification, and no decision has been made on when that will happen, USAC Vice President-Lifeline Michelle Garber told the Telecom Staff Subcommittee at NARUC Sunday. A state commissioner and subcommittee members grilled Garber on high rates of users failing the automated check due to the NV not accessing all databases relevant to determining eligibility, with USAC not even trying to access them in higher cost states.
Two federal-state joint boards plan to meet Monday during NARUC's conference in Washington, Universal Service State Chair Chris Nelson and Jurisdictional Separations State Chair Sarah Hofmann told us Friday. The FCC named new Commissioner Geoffrey Starks to both joint boards, which Commissioner Mike O'Rielly chairs on the federal side. Being a commissioner also makes Starks a member of a federal-state joint conference on advanced services, said an FCC order released Friday on dockets 96-45 and others. Starks met with reporters Friday (see 1902080056). States have two vacancies on the Separations panel because former Montana Commissioner Travis Kavulla left for the R Street Institute and Wendy Moser wasn’t reappointed to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. The FCC didn’t comment.
Industry and local governments are backing rival Maryland bills meant to speed wireless infrastructure deployment. Maryland Economic Matters Committee Chair Dereck Davis (D) Wednesday introduced HB-654 to pre-empt local governments in the right of way. It includes a “deemed granted” provision on a 60-day shot clock for local authorities to act on a collocation application and a 90-day clock for installing, modifying or replacing a pole. It would limit application fees to $500 for a single application including up to five facilities, plus $100 per each additional facility on that form. Annual ROW occupancy rates couldn't exceed $20 yearly per facility, and collocation “shall be set” at $100 annually per facility. Industry and local government spent months negotiating, but Davis introduced what industry initially had proposed, said ultraMontgomery Program Director Mitsuko Herrera in a Thursday interview. She said Montgomery County is “firmly opposed” to HB-654 but supports an alternative, SB-713, drafted by municipal and county groups and introduced Monday by Sen. Pamela Beidle (D). The Senate Finance panel Wednesday scheduled a hearing on it for Feb. 26 at 1 p.m. Localities’ bill doesn’t set limits on rental fees because Maryland already requires cost-based fees, Herrera said. It would uphold local zoning regulations, require public hearings, consider community needs including aesthetics and ensure enhanced connections to the unserved, she said. CTIA didn’t comment. Meanwhile, Georgia's SB-66, the expected result of autumn talks between industry and local governments (see 1901070045), entered the Senate hopper Wednesday. It would limit application fees to $100 per facility on existing poles, $250 for each replacement pole and $1,000 for each new pole. Annual ROW couldn't exceed $100 annually for each small cell on an existing or replacement pole or $200 for each new pole, and annual collocation rates couldn’t exceed $40 yearly. If the application is “an eligible facilities request, the authority shall not deny the application” and must approve it within 60 days, the bill said. Mississippi's SB-2003 died Tuesday in committee.
ANNAPOLIS -- Maryland shouldn’t wait for courts to rule on net neutrality before moving ahead with a law to restrict procurement to companies that follow such rules, Maryland Del. Kirill Reznik (D) told us Wednesday after the House Economic Affairs panel heard testimony on his net neutrality and ISP privacy bill (HB-141). Telecom and cable industry witnesses advised the state to wait at least until a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which heard argument last week on the FCC net neutrality order (see 1902010046). A House Communications Subcommittee hearing is Thursday (see 1902060036).
Restricting law enforcement from compelling suspects to unlock smartphones would create a “zone of lawlessness," Utah, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania told the Indiana Supreme Court in an amicus brief posted Monday in Katelin Seo v. Indiana (18S-CR-00595). It's "increasingly rare to have a case that does not include digital evidence,” and digital keys are nearly impossible to crack with brute force, the eight states said. Prohibiting law enforcement from compelling password entry “drastically alters the balance of power between investigators and criminals and renders law enforcement often incapable of lawfully accessing relevant evidence,” they said. Amici ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued the Fifth Amendment protects suspects from incriminating themselves via compelled password entry. The states cited an exception: If the compelled act doesn't give the government additional information, the result is a “foregone conclusion” not protected by the amendment, they said. “Entering a password communicates only a single thing: that the person knows the password.” Law enforcement doesn’t need to know the device’s contents, which would be an impossible burden, they said. The ACLU and EFF rejected the foregone-conclusion rationale, saying it has been used only in the context of producing specific, tangible business and financial records. And even so, a state "would have to show with reasonable particularity that it has independent knowledge of any and all information disclosed by the compelled act of production -- including that the phone belongs to the witness and also that the specific, identifiable files it seeks are stored” there, the groups said: Merely showing the person knows the password isn’t enough.
The Connecticut Superior Court should reject a Public Utilities Regulatory Authority decision limiting local-government use of the municipal-gain space on poles by considering the plain meaning of a 2013 state law saying the space may be used “for any purpose,” the Connecticut Office of Consumer Counsel wrote in a Monday reply brief. Connecticut defended PURA in December for interpreting the phrase as not allowing municipal broadband, saying the agency had sought a reasoned construction of statute comporting with state and federal law (see 1812100006). The 2013 law was written when broadband on utility poles was common, so it's “inconceivable” municipalities might use the gain for public broadband, OCC said. By considering federal laws, PURA overreached because it isn't a court that may determine constitutionality of state laws, the consumer counsel said. It was "textbook arbitrary and capricious," because the regulator said in a 2004 decision on dispute between Southern New England Telephone Co. and Manchester, Connecticut, that it had no jurisdiction over the internet as an information service, but in the 2018 case, PURA argued lack of jurisdiction was irrelevant, OCC said. Oral argument could be in April, OCC Principal Attorney Joe Rosenthal told us.
Nebraska needs a small-cells law even though the FCC adopted fee limits in September, Nebraska legislators heard. “We need consistent and clear rates, terms and conditions that will apply across the state to all the municipalities rather than having to go city by city … to deal with interpretations of the FCC order that will just slow down deployment,” said AT&T Associate General Counsel David Tate Monday. Cities and the cable industry opposed LB-184 at the livestreamed hearing of the Transportation and Telecom Committee in the unicameral legislature.
Gear up for nearly a year of privacy debate over possible legislative edits to the 2018 California Consumer Privacy Act, said a top state senator and business and privacy advocates in interviews. The law will be enforced from Jan. 1, though the attorney general has until July 1, 2021, to adopt rules and guidance interpreting CCPA. Final text will be “incredibly important” even for those outside the state because California is the No. 5 economy, said Mintz Levin's Cynthia Larose.
The poor could be in danger of losing support for phone service due to shortcomings of the Lifeline national verifier (NV), state commissioners told us this week. NARUC plans to vote at its Feb. 10-13 meeting in Washington on a resolution proposing changes to reduce barriers to accessing Lifeline (see 1901290029). Lifeline providers and a consumer advocate hope the resolution is a wake-up call. The FCC said critics seek to undermine efforts to protect the fund’s integrity.
A NARUC draft resolution seeks to increase Lifeline access by proposing changes to the national verifier that has launched in 11 states and Guam. The FCC and Universal Service Administrative Co. should “work with the states to properly launch the National Verifier so that eligible low-income consumers can reasonably and efficiently sign up for the federal Lifeline program without undue burdens or delays,” said Tuesday's draft by Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Crystal Rhoades (D), a NARUC Telecom Committee member. The FCC should continue to allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid cards as proof of enrollment to show Lifeline eligibility, streamline Lifeline paper applications, ensure states that launched the national verifier can access SNAP, Medicaid and other critical state and federal databases used for eligibility, and let Lifeline providers provide proof generated by managed care organizations to Medicaid recipients if requested. A SNAP card may be a Lifeline applicant's only document to show participation, but USAC wants to invalidate them because the cards don’t show issued or expiration dates, it noted. USAC hasn’t established a “single, complete database to determine eligibility for Lifeline, as directed by the FCC,” and has hard launched some states without access to any major state and federal databases, it said. Without that, it “will not be able to perform automated, near-real time eligibility verification” and instead must rely on a costlier and more error-prone manual process, it said. Paper applications are confusing, leading to rejections, the draft said. Applicants must initial “nine separate boxes to signify their assent” to nine statements, but “many applicants incorrectly interpret the boxes as checkboxes, check-marking each statement rather than initialing it.” NARUC plans to consider the resolution at its Feb. 10-13 meeting in Washington. The FCC declined comment.