Colorado will soon release a FirstNet request for proposals seeking alternative radio-access-network (RAN) plans if the state decides to opt out of the federal proposal, said Brian Shepherd, the state’s FirstNet single point of contact. The state plans to release the RFP later this month or early April, he said. The state issued a request for information last year and got 10 responses (see 1611100049). “The RFI was more of an informational gathering exercise … to understand the business, financial and operational issues to consider in an alternative RAN implementation and look for alternative models [than] what FirstNet was using,” Shepherd emailed Wednesday. “The RFP will be a request to actually develop and implement an alternative RAN for Colorado. The objective is to have a formalized plan developed by the time the Governor has to make the opt-in/out decision so that we have two fully vetted options to compare.” Also, NTIA published a one-page infographic on the state opt-out process.

Arizona Corporation Commissioners voted unanimously to adopt a state broadband fund for rural schools. At an ACC meeting Tuesday, they approved amendments to state USF rules to set up the $8 million state-matching fund, which will allow Arizona to take advantage of up to $100 million in federal E-rate Category One funding for broadband (see 1701300033). The commission released a proposed order March 7, but the final decision wasn't immediately available Tuesday. In the days leading up to the vote, companies continued to demand limits on fund distribution. In Monday comments, Cox urged the commission to say funding is for last-mile projects only and not for overbuilding. The ACC should make clear that the agency isn't extending its regulatory authority to broadband services, the cable operator said.

Two California mayors said they would support a union strike against AT&T if the contract dispute continues, as 79 elected officials wrote a letter supporting workers. About 17,000 California and Nevada union workers voted to authorize a strike in December, but union leaders have yet to declare one (see 1612160065). “If they did go on strike, then I would support the strike,” Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor (D) said Tuesday on a Communications Workers of America teleconference. Arvin Mayor Jose Gurrola said, “I would support them because they’re standing up for good-paying jobs and good benefits and providing reliable, quality service throughout the state.” Gillmor said Santa Clara residents complain about AT&T landline phone and internet services, and Gurrola said Arvin residents don’t have reliable mobile or high-speed services. “You would imagine that we wouldn't have any issues in our location" in Silicon Valley, Gillmor said. “But we still experience and I receive many complaints from our residents about the lack of quality and in some cases availability of service.” The mayors joined 77 other California and Nevada elected officials writing a letter to CEO Randall Stephenson about reliability problems and job cuts as the company negotiates with workers in the two states. Mayors, city council members and state legislators signed the letter. A spokesman responded that the telco employs more full-time, union employees than any other company in the U.S., hiring 2,700 union employees in California last year. That's across the business and a combination of new jobs and backfill for attrition, a spokesperson told us. It invested about $7.25 billion in California wireless and wireline networks over the past three years, he said. “Our objective is to reach a fair contract that will allow us to continue to provide solid union-represented careers with excellent wages and benefits, just as we have with 28 of our other bargaining units across the country, including [International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers] IBEW-represented landline employees in California who ratified a very similar agreement to the one we’re proposing with the CWA.”

Verizon’s stated plans to invest $1 billion in New York City fiber over four years are no defense for failing to meet a 2014 deadline in the company’s cable franchise agreement to roll out Fios video service to all city residents, a city spokeswoman said Tuesday. Verizon promised the spending after the city sued Monday in the New York Supreme Court. After a notice of default in September (see 1609140058), the city filed a lawsuit claiming Verizon breached its cable franchise agreement. But the telco said it had met the commitment, by its definition of "homes passed." The city asked the court to confirm that Verizon breached the agreement and to compel the company to comply. Verizon plans to “vigorously fight this frivolous lawsuit,” a spokesman emailed. The company will invest another $1 billion in fiber in New York City over the next four years and expand Fios to 1 million more city households, he said. But the city spokeswoman replied that Verizon has failed by three years and counting to meet a commitment made about a decade ago. “Trumpeting a big dollar figure doesn’t change that,” she said. Before the suit, Verizon disputed the city’s complaints in a March 10 letter to Commissioner Anne Roest of the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. “It is disappointing that you are demanding commitments that have no basis in our Agreement, that are beyond anything ever contemplated when we entered into that Agreement, and that are infeasible and counterproductive,” wrote Executive Vice President-Public Policy Craig Silliman. The suit is bad public relations for the company and may hurt the Big Apple’s smart city efforts, 556 Ventures analyst Bill Ho emailed Tuesday. “The surface impact to Verizon is continued negative public relations as the lawsuit continues.” The downside for the city is that it could hold back its smart-city plans, since that requires public-private cooperation, the analyst said. “The current animus from NYC’s mayoral office could make it difficult to realize fully, especially when NYC is in Verizon’s backyard.”

New Mexico should deregulate telecom to spur broadband, said New Mexico Association of Commerce and Industry CEO Jason Espinoza. In a guest column in the Albuquerque Journal, Espinoza supported state legislation (HB-57, SB-53) to deregulate telecom companies. The bills would reduce filing requirements and provide expedited proceedings. Companies seeking deregulation would have to show effective competition on a wire-center basis, with separate determinations for residential and business services. For a wire center to be competitive, it would need to have at least two facilities-based competitors, including wireless or VoIP, operating in all or part of the wire center. Despite increased competition from wireless and VoIP services, regulations remain on landline service, Espinoza said. The bills would align New Mexico with 32 other states that adopted similar measures, while maintaining consumer protections and costing nothing to the state, he said. If it moves forward with the bills, it would join other states eyeing telecom deregulation (see 1703100041).

A Texas dispute over right-of-way fees between Houston and ExteNet pits Texas Public Utility Commission staff against PUC administrative law judges. Commissioners plan to vote March 30 on the ALJs’ proposed decision supporting ExteNet in the company’s dispute with Houston (see 1702280039). The distributed antenna systems (DAS) provider said it doesn’t have to pay fees to Houston because Chapter 283, a local code for franchise fees, sets rates based on a company’s number of access lines -- but as a DAS provider ExteNet has no access lines. ALJs agreed in a proposed decision last month, saying ExteNet backhaul is covered under the franchise agreements of commercial mobile radio service providers who pay the city. But in exceptions filed Friday, Texas PUC staff disagreed, saying commissioners instead should require ExteNet to negotiate franchise agreements with cities to access the right of way (ROW). “While the ALJs attempt to uphold the Legislature's intent of promoting competition under the statute, the Proposal for Decision (PFD) actually creates an anti-competitive result,” staff said. ALJs took too strict of an interpretation of Chapter 283, allowing ExteNet "to enjoy the absurd result of getting to use the City ROW for free without requiring the provider to offer a qualifying service,” it said. Staff rejected possible remedies suggested by the ALJs. Nothing in the record supports one idea to revoke “service provider certificate of operating authority” for providers without access lines, staff said. A proposed rulemaking to explicitly include ExteNet facilities within the definition of access lines could be “a complicated process with many unanswered issues to address,” it said. Houston also rejected ALJs’ proposed decision, saying the judges improperly read the law and commission rules. ALJs’ conclusion that CMRS providers already pay the city for right of way "is at best an overstatement,” the city said. “Neither Houston nor the State has any franchising authority over CMRS providers.” Houston acknowledged it has a license agreement with Verizon, and ExteNet has a contract with the CMRS provider to install wireless facilitates. "Even as to Verizon, ExteNet's proposal isn't to act as Verizon's contractor, but rather to install facilities as a host provider for Verizon's use and any other CMRS providers irrespective of whether or not those other CMRS providers have an agreement with the City for use of the ROW,” Houston said. "If an entity such as ExteNet serves as a contractor for a CMRS provider to install facilities in the City's ROW, it may do so only under the auspices of that CMRS provider's license agreement.”

Nine small New York ILECs may recover revenue losses resulting from the phase-out of terminating access charges mandated by the FCC’s 2011 Connect America Fund order, the New York Public Service Commission ruled in an order released Friday. The commission decided the companies should receive the full amounts requested, adding up to a $47,490 total, the commission said. Eight of the companies requested additional state USF money to recover the revenue, while the ninth requested accelerated amortization of a deferred credit balance, the commission said.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles proposed regulations that won't require the presence of a human inside a self-driving car being tested, a move Consumer Watchdog said would endanger people's safety. In a Friday notice, the DMV said "the proposed regulations promote the development of autonomous technology that has the potential to increase safety and enhance mobility, while focusing on issues related to roadway safety." It said an automaker would certify the vehicles being tested have a communications link, provide information about the "intended operational design domain," maintain a training program, provide disclosures to passengers and submit a safety assessment letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) (see 1609200039). John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog privacy project director, said in a news release that the proposal is "too industry friendly and don't adequately protect consumers." The DMV is also shifting safety enforcement to the federal government, he added. “The NHTSA safety check list is meaningless because it doesn’t set any standards," he said. "It only asks that [manufacturers] voluntarily say, ‘Yeah, we thought about this stuff.’” The proposal would require automakers to notify a municipality of testing plans, not get permission, and would weaken requirements to report testing failures, he said. The DMV plans an April 25 hearing in Sacramento.

The Kentucky Public Service Commission ended Lifeline support for about 149,000 cellphone users, refocusing funds on about 17,000 eligible elderly and rural customers with landlines, the state commission said in a Friday news release. Meanwhile, the Utah legislature passed a bill Thursday that includes making wireless companies eligible for state Lifeline support. Under the Kentucky PSC order, the state on May 1 will no longer give $3.50 monthly for low-income customers’ wireless services, it said. With the FCC phasing out Lifeline subsidies for landline voice services in December 2021, Kentucky will gradually increase its Lifeline subsidy for those services to $7.50 per month, it said. With far fewer customers to be supported by Kentucky Lifeline, the state USF surcharge on customer phone bills will drop to 3 cents from 14 cents on July 1, the PSC said. The commission launched a review of the state USF in February last year after seeing the fund was on the verge of running out, a problem also seen in other states (see 1607010010). The agency decided an increasing number of wireless customers qualifying for Lifeline shrank the USF balance, it said. Last March, the PSC tried increasing the contribution surcharge to 14 cents from 8 cents, but then three more wireless providers with about 85,000 Lifeline customers applied for state Lifeline funds, it said. Supporting them would have required the PSC to increase the surcharge again to 21 cents, but the agency decided that was an unreasonable burden for the public, it said: “What is clear is that the program cannot continue in its current form.” Low-income customers can still get a $9.25 monthly federal subsidy for wireless service and competition should keep wireless rates low even without the state Lifeline subsidy, it said. In Utah, another state with a shrinking USF fund, the legislature passed SB-130, which includes a provision adding wireless Lifeline support. The Senate voted 26-0 Thursday to concur with a House amendment after the House voted 74-0 in support the same day. It says telecom companies providing access lines, connections or wholesale broadband internet access service qualify for state USF distributions. It requires each provider to contribute to the USF and requires the PSC to develop a method for calculating the amount of each contribution. The bill could add revenue to the state USF, said a fiscal note Monday (see 1703060050).

The Missouri House Utilities Committee cleared a small-cells wireless siting bill at a hearing Wednesday. HB-656 pre-empts local authority on small-cell siting, like many other bills now moving through state legislatures (see 1703080011). Under the bill, local authorities wouldn't be able to require an application “for routine maintenance on previously permitted small wireless facility collocations, or the replacement of small wireless facilities with substantially smaller ones,” a summary said. Thursday, North Carolina lawmakers added another small-cells bill to the map. Under HB-310, small cells would not be subject to zoning review, and applications would be deemed granted if not reviewed after 60 days. Localities could charge up to $100 per facility for the first five listed in an application and $50 for each additional facility. As in Missouri, no application would be needed for routine maintenance or replacing facilities with smaller ones. Debate over small-cells siting for 5G networks also is occurring at the FCC in response to a Mobilitie petition (see 1703090013).