The District of Columbia Council must be careful not to complicate efforts to access federal broadband funding as it develops internet equity bill B24-200, said D.C. Chief Technology Officer Lindsey Parker at a virtual hearing Wednesday. The Office of the Chief Technology Officer is exploring municipal broadband, including possibly becoming a middle-mile provider that would work with small local last-mile providers, she told a Government Operations and Facilities Committee hearing.
The District of Columbia’s 911 center failed in many months to meet national standards for getting timely help to callers, reported the Office of D.C. Auditor Tuesday. ODCA said insufficient supervision of call-taking and dispatch, plus operators’ distrust in location technology, contributed to failures at the Office of Unified Communications, including inconsistent call handling and difficulty determining location of emergencies. Local officials want action.
A New Jersey state court agreed with a federal court that the Cable Act preempts a New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) prorating rule challenged by Altice. The Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the requirement in an unpublished opinion Friday. The division said U.S. District Court Judge for New Jersey Brian Martinotti “reviewed the same facts and issues and determined preemption applied” in a March 23 opinion, which was challenged to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 2104230051). “After considering the judge's cogent reasoning and the lack of New Jersey case law compelling an opposite outcome, we adopt the reasoning articulated by Judge Martinotti, finding the Cable Act expressly preempted N.J.A.C. 14:18-3.8(c).” The Cable Act authorizes states to enact only consumer protection laws that aren't specifically preempted, the division said. The New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel is disappointed and will review options for next steps, emailed acting Rate Counsel Director Brian Lipman Monday: “We continue to believe that this is a customer service issue under the BPU’s jurisdiction and that the BPU properly moved to protect the rights of New Jersey cable ratepayers.” The New Jersey attorney general’s office declined to comment. Altice didn’t comment.
Localities want to blow up silos created by the Telecom Act, a NATOA webinar heard Monday. The act didn’t anticipate how critical the internet would be or that companies would provide so many services over so many technologies, said NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner. “Silos are causing a lot of the issues now.” The persistence of different technology buckets for wireline, cable and wireless “allows for a kind of arbitrage” in which companies try to choose which silo’s rules apply to their services, said Rick Ellrod, Communications Policy and Regulation Division director for Fairfax County, Virginia. “Silos don’t make sense anymore because of convergence,” agreed local government attorney Mike Bradley. He cautioned it could take eight years to change the act after “people get serious about it, and I’m not sure that anybody is serious about it yet.” Werner said policymakers’ desire to address issues like privacy or digital equity could lead to a broader discussion about the silos standing in the way of changes on those fronts. Since the original act included broadcast TV channels, it would make sense for a rewrite to include over-the-top streaming services like Netflix, said Bradley. Local authority protected by the 1996 act has eroded in the courts, panelists said. Section 253 is the “most litigated section” and might be its biggest failure, Bradley said. The section was meant to increase competition, said Ellrod, but now industry uses it as a weapon to prevent it.
A Massachusetts legislative committee's sudden delay of testimony on a possible digital ad tax caused some confusion Monday. The Joint Revenue Committee was originally scheduled to consider H-3081 at a virtual hearing that day. Bill sponsor Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven (D) testified on the bill, but House Chair Mark Cusick (D) then told her it wasn’t on the agenda. The tax bill “was removed from the agenda for today's hearing by mutual agreement of the Chairs ... because the Committee has other bills like this bill and have decided to hear them together at a future hearing,” Cusick’s Chief of Staff Ryan Sterling emailed us. Senate Chair Adam Hinds' (D) Chief of Staff Steve Maher told us “the bill was added by mistake to today's hearing and was removed once the error was noticed.” Chairs typically agree on a set of bills to be heard, and since H-3081 wasn't discussed "it was removed to be heard at a later date,” he emailed.
The District of Columbia’s 911 center failed in many months to meet national standards for getting timely help to callers, found the Office of D.C. Auditor (ODCA) in a Tuesday report. Insufficient supervision of 911 call-taking and dispatch, plus operators’ distrust in automatic location technology, contributed to failures at the Office of Unified Communications including inconsistent call handling and difficulties determining location of emergencies, the report said.
Don’t let internet companies hide behind groups, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) urged Thursday. NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association lack associational or organizational standing, so their complaint against the Texas social media law should be dismissed, said Paxton’s motion at U.S. District Court in Austin (case 1:21-cv-00840). “Consistent with how they avoid accountability to the public at large, Plaintiffs’ members have attempted to shield themselves from the burdens of challenging a law they do not like by getting their lobbying groups to do it for them,” he said Thursday. “But Plaintiffs cannot meet standing requirements based on bare assertions that their members protect the public from harm, let alone their claims that these behemoths of the tech world should be exempt from all transparency requirements in their intentional practices currently affecting Texas’ citizens’ free access to information.” NetChoice didn’t comment. Friday, Judge Robert Pitman extended until Oct. 22 a deadline for Texas to respond to the industry groups' preliminary injunction motion. The groups urged the court Wednesday not to delay the case by two months (see 2110130056). The judge in the similar Florida case dispensed with the state's standing objection in one sentence, said CCIA President Matt Schruers in a statement: “CCIA and NetChoice unquestionably have legal standing as trade associations whose members are affected by these unconstitutional laws that violate the First Amendment and federal law."
Unconditionally allowing Verizon to acquire Tracfone would hurt competition and fail California’s public interest test, said a California Public Utilities Commission proposed decision Friday. The CPUC may vote Nov. 18 on a proposal by Administrative Law Judge Thomas Glegola to conditionally clear the deal that would affect many low-income customers.
Industry groups warned about high compliance costs from a proposed Massachusetts Information Privacy Act, at a virtual hearing Wednesday. Consumer privacy advocates said MIPA could be the strongest state law in the country. The Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet and Cybersecurity heard testimony on 40 bills, including net neutrality, privacy, broadband, digital equity and RF safety.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed broadband bills Friday to extend and enlarge the California Advanced Services Fund. Newsom signed AB-14 and SB-4 that together extend CASF by 10 years and raise the surcharge cap to $150 million yearly from $66 million (see 2109100035). He signed SB-28 to increase California Public Utilities Commission authority to check if state video franchisees are deploying enough broadband. Newsom signed SB-378, requiring localities to let fiber installers use microtrenching unless shown it would hurt health and safety. He signed AB-41 about agency coordination on conduit deployment. Newsom vetoed the cable-backed AB-1560 on distance learning because he said the funding duplicated money from other recent laws. Earlier last week, Newsom vetoed a small-cells bill meant to streamline wireless infrastructure deployment by preempting localities in the right of way (see 2110050043).