CTIA is asking the California Public Utilities Commission to clarify post-disaster community engagement requirements for facilities-based telecommunications service providers. In a petition Tuesday, CTIA said the wireless industry and CPUC staff had been on the same page about community engagement requirements applying to situations where a communications provider must rebuild or do major restoration after a disaster. However, the CPUC now apparently expects community meetings for any service outage resulting from a declared disaster, CTIA said. That approach "risks frustrating and confusing communities."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) this week signed into law AB-1303, which prohibits the state's Public Utilities Commission and Lifeline program from sharing the immigration status of FCC Lifeline applicants or subscribers with other government entities without a valid subpoena or warrant (see 2509170065).
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Monday signed into law SB-576, which mandates that the volume of commercials on streaming services can't be louder than the original programming. Newsom's office said the bill builds on the 2010 Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act passed by Congress, which applied to broadcast TV stations and cable operators.
The deadline for applications to the Advance Colorado Mini Grant Program is Nov. 7, the Colorado Broadband Office said Friday. About $800,000 is available to applicants that have previously been awarded a state or federal broadband deployment grant from the state broadband office, it said.
Social media companies have a Jan. 1 deadline for reporting their content moderation policies to the New York Attorney General's Office, it said Thursday as it announced that the online portal for submitting those reports is open. The Stop Hiding Hate Act, signed into law in December, requires social media companies to submit terms of service reports to the AG's office, and report on the steps taken and on flagged or actioned items of content. “With violence and polarization on the rise, social media companies must ensure that their platforms don’t fuel hateful rhetoric and disinformation,” said AG Letitia James (D).
Contracts between the state and broadband providers regarding access to public rights-of-way are terminable at will by either party, the Georgia Supreme Court said this week. Since the contracts don't have a fixed period or end date, their duration is subject to either party's complete discretion, the court said (docket S25A0635). "The result is that these particular contracts are contracts of indefinite duration, terminable at will by either party."
Quintillion plans to build new branches of its subsea cable system off a new extension stretching from Nome, Alaska, to other locations in the state. In an FCC application Tuesday to modify its existing cable landing license, Quintillion said the new branches would provide fiber-optic infrastructure to communities in its service region, giving them "a diverse, resilient, low latency, competitive pathway to U.S. and global interconnectivity and cloud services."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is warning Alphabet and its YouTube subsidiary that his office may take action if YouTube TV, a virtual MVPD, drops Univision from its basic streaming package. In a letter Tuesday to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, Paxton said the possible cancellation, planned for the same day, is "obvious retaliation for Univision's .... viewpoint diversity" and its hosting of a town hall event during President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign. "That was a laudable decision, and to the extent that YouTube TV is now using market power to punish it, such retaliation will not be tolerated," Paxton said. He also criticized YouTube for using Univision to solicit subscribers in its advertising, despite the looming cancellation.
New York will distribute $15.5 million in mobile service and broadband infrastructure awards and open new grant application windows on broadband solutions, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced in a release Monday. “Reliable mobile service is vital to New York’s economy and critical to driving innovation, jobs and opportunity statewide,” Hochul said in the release. The awards are for $5.2 million to expand mobile service in New York’s Nassau, Otsego, Schenectady and Warren counties, over $10 million in awards for municipal infrastructure in Alleghany County, and $320,000 for affordable housing connectivity in Broome County, the release said. The new requests for applications announced in the release are for a $5 million grant for innovative methods to lower the costs of fiber installation, $5 million to support business models that prioritize low income and rural connectivity, and $5 million to assist local government broadband and digital equity projects.
Alaska released the revised draft of its final BEAD plan for public comment Thursday night. Comments are due 5 p.m. local time Wednesday. The state plans to spend 78.3% of its allocated funding, noting in its draft that about $215 million would be available for non-deployment funding. About 53% will go to fiber providers, 33% to low earth orbit satellites and 14% to wireless providers.