The FCC will investigate the nationwide CenturyLink outage that disrupted 911 service for many Americans, Chairman Ajit Pai said Friday. At our deadline, the carrier was still working to resolve the multistate outage that began Thursday (see 1812270050). The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) said the outage shows urgent need to fully deploy next-generation 911. NARUC and state consumer advocates applauded FCC action.
The Oregon Public Utility Commission voted 2-0 Thursday for an order to implement information disclosure rules for broadband internet access service providers as required by the Oregon net neutrality law restricting procurement to ISPs that don’t follow open-internet rules. Commissioners rejected calls by industry not to proceed (see 1811070037), and CenturyLink’s recommendations to clarify that obligations don’t exceed the FCC’s now-moot 2015 rules and to re-emphasize carriers’ obligation to protect customer proprietary network information. “We have the authority and the responsibility to fulfill the legislative mandate to craft rules to advance and complete the express legislative policy,” said Chair Megan Decker in the livestreamed meeting. Supporting the order in AR-618, Commissioner Stephen Bloom said he doesn’t believe the PUC has authority to “restrict remedies available” for violations of the state law. “Every email, application and video should not be subject to multiple state jurisdictions," a CenturyLink spokesperson said. "Internet traffic is inherently interstate in nature and thus best handled at the federal level.” Earlier this week, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) urged the U.S. District Court in Burlington to dismiss cable and telecom industry groups’ challenge of the state’s net neutrality law and executive order, both of which restricted government contracts to companies that follow open-internet principles (see 1810180045). Scott sought a stay while the motion to dismiss is pending, and while review of the FCC Restoring Internet Freedom order is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “Plaintiffs lack standing because they have not alleged that an identified member of any Plaintiff “ha[s] suffered or [will] suffer harm” caused by the challenged contracting requirements,” he wrote. “Plaintiffs do not allege that any of their members have ever done anything in Vermont inconsistent with net neutrality or been prevented from doing anything inconsistent with net neutrality by State contracting requirements.” NCTA, USTelecom and other industry plaintiffs didn’t comment.
Text-to-911 adoption is growing, but more work lies ahead, with many state-and-territory deployments not stretching across the entire jurisdiction, emergency number officials told us last week. “We’re absolutely headed in the right direction,” but funding is necessary as well as "many, many 911 centers" and "we need to try to accelerate that,” said NG-911 Institute Executive Director Patrick Halley in an interview. Ahead of most, Maine and Massachusetts completed statewide text-to-911 rollouts this month.
Five states remain to clear T-Mobile buying Sprint after the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities joined 13 other states needed, Sprint said in a Thursday letter to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, which is reviewing the deal. The carriers await state OKs in California, Hawaii, Mississippi and New York, Sprint said. The New Jersey BPU cleared the deal Tuesday without conditions, saying it's "not expected to adversely impact competition," rates, jobs or service. The board lacks jurisdiction over wireless infrastructure, it added. Earlier last week, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. and Team Telecom, comprising DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security and DOD, withdrew its request the FCC defer action (see 1812180044). The New York Public Service Commission should give more time to file a second round of comments on T-Mobile/Sprint, the Communications Workers of America and Public Utility Law Project said Friday. The commission Thursday gave until Jan. 3 (see 1812200049), but CWA and PULP said they should be due around Jan. 17. Under current deadlines, they would “functionally have five working days” when considering holidays, travel and other commitments, they said. “This time frame will make it impossible to comply with the Protective Order, receive the Confidential material, analyze such material and other parts of the Petitioner’s comments, receive benefit of expert analysis and otherwise fully and fairly participate.”
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission voted 4-1 Thursday to increase the Telephone Assistance Program (TAP) surcharge by 7 cents to 10 cents per month, funding a $7 credit for the poor that’s double the current amount, and to increase outreach around the program. The Minnesota Office of Attorney General proposed a higher fee and increased outreach to improve lagging program participation (see 1812050022). Increasing outreach without raising the credit wouldn’t likely much affect participation, PUC Chair Nancy Lange (D) said at the livestreamed meeting, her final before she departs the agency. “We’ve tried a lot of different things, maybe we haven’t tried enough, and it seems like the last, most logical tool in the toolbox is increase the credit.” Supporting the $7 credit, Commissioner Dan Lipschultz (D) wants to “go as high as we can go” under statutory limits. “See what happens, and that will be instructive for the legislature,” he said. “If they see very little impact, then we know we need to do other things,” such as review whether TAP should support wireless or broadband, he said. Commissioner Katie Sieben (D) opposed the increase, saying that “we’re trying to reach a larger pool of low-income customers, and to do that, we’re essentially increasing their telephone fee.” Seven cents more “may not sound like a whole lot on the surface,” said Minnesota Telecom Alliance CEO Brent Christensen: “But when you put it together with everything else” on the bill including USF charges, “you’re talking about significant increases.”
Vermont lawmakers should hold off making privacy rules like the 2016 FCC ISP privacy order, California’s 2018 privacy law (see 1812200008) and the EU general data protection regulation, the Vermont attorney general office recommended to the General Assembly this week. No additional net neutrality action is needed in Vermont, which last year enacted a law banning state contracts with ISPs that violate open internet principles, the AG office reported to legislators. The privacy report recommended that Vermont designate and fund a chief privacy officer, conduct a state privacy audit, adopt a law modeled on California’s 2014 Student Online Personal Protection Act, amend the Security Breach Notice Act to expand scope of personally identifiable information, and harmonize varying state definitions of personal information. Vermont enacted a bill in May to mandate security standards for data brokers and require them to report annually to the Vermont secretary of state (see 1805140060). The net neutrality report said the state “continues to vigorously challenge” the FCC net neutrality order. “Vermont will defend its own laws with equal vigor and tenacity. While we believe the State’s positions will ultimately be vindicated by the courts, the Attorney General recommends that lawmakers abstain from additional action with respect to net neutrality until more is known about how the courts interpret the purview and authority of the federal and state governments with respect to net neutrality, and in particular the actions taken in this area.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation supports many of the privacy suggestions but sees “missed opportunities” in what the AG chose to defer, said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Adam Schwartz in an interview Thursday. The 2018 state privacy law on third-party data brokers was an “impressive step,” but covered only “half the story” since it didn’t govern Facebook or other first parties, he said. EFF would like to see broadband privacy rules, based on the reversed 2016 FCC order, in Vermont and other states.
States diverted nearly 10 percent of $2.9 billion in 911 fee revenue for unrelated purposes in 2017, the FCC reported Wednesday. For the first time, every jurisdiction responded for this year’s report, so some exact comparisons may not be possible. The FCC flagged Montana, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Rhode Island, West Virginia and the U.S. Virgin Islands as responsible for the $285 million in diverted revenue.
Cities sought court stay of the FCC September wireless infrastructure order, and the commission and wireless carriers opposed San Jose’s motion to transfer appeal of the order to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Action is urgently required on this Motion, as the Order will be effective in part on January 14, 2019,” San Jose and other cities said Monday (in Pacer). “The Order dramatically changes the status quo that the Commission concedes works well in many places,” violates the Communications Act and “raises significant constitutional issues,” cities said. “A stay will allow deployment to proceed while avoiding significant delays and irreversible harms that would result from nationwide regulatory whiplash as the Order takes effect in stages and potentially changes after judicial review.” A judicial lottery selected the 10th Circuit for industry and local-government challenges, but San Jose sought transfer to the 9th (see 1811300034). “San Jose misreads federal law as requiring transfer to the Ninth Circuit after the Judicial Panel randomly assigned all six qualifying petitions, filed in four different circuits, to this Circuit,” the FCC said in opposition posted Tuesday. The agency disagreed with cities’ argument courts should treat an August infrastructure order -- under appeal in the 9th -- as the first part of the same order. They "are separate standalone orders that were adopted by separate votes on separate documents at separate times based on differing records (with over 700 additional record submissions for the September Order), and the two orders each address separate and discrete subjects,” the FCC said. They are different, CTIA agreed (in Pacer). Cities’ “suggestion that this Court is somehow ill-suited to resolve the relevant legal issues or is not as well situated to consider this case as the Ninth Circuit, is legally unsupported and a transparent attempt at forum shopping. Moreover, because serious jurisdictional questions cloud the petition pending in the Ninth Circuit for review of the August Order, transfer of this case to that court would be particularly inappropriate.” Transfer got support (in Pacer) of Seattle and other municipalities that challenged the FCC order separately from the San Jose group.
Charter Communications will pay $62.5 million in direct refunds to consumers to settle a New York lawsuit that alleged wide disparity between the former Time Warner Cable’s advertised and actual internet speeds, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood (D) said Tuesday. The AG said it’s the largest consumer payout by an ISP in U.S. history, and the settlement could be worth $174.2 million including the value of premium channels and streaming services the company plans to provide free. Charter’s separate negotiation with New York over the Public Service Commission revoking TWC deal OK over allegedly missed broadband deployment commitments (see 1812110022) continue and is the bigger worry for Wall Street, said MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and wireless carriers cheered after an FCC order persuaded the California Public Utilities Commission not to move ahead on a Jan. 10 vote on a proposal to affirm text messaging is subject to state USF and other “public purpose program” surcharges. Last week’s FCC order classifying wireless texting as an information service (see 1812120043), plus negative public attention in the media, contributed to the state agency scuttling the item, observers said. The CPUC could legally revive the plan, said NARUC and California consumer groups.