Two federal courts extended filing due dates in AT&T lawsuits against municipal one-touch, make-ready ordinances. In an order (in Pacer) Wednesday, U.S. District Court in Louisville granted an AT&T motion for extension, allowing the company to reply by Oct. 31 in support of its motion for summary judgment against Louisville. In an order (in Pacer) Tuesday, U.S. District Court in Nashville granted a Nashville motion for extension allowing the city to respond by Nov. 14 to an AT&T lawsuit. The telco sued both cities because the company claims municipalities lack authority to regulate pole attachments. The cities passed the measures to speed deployments of Google Fiber and those of future new entrants (see 1610060044).
The Missouri Public Service Commission supported a USTelecom petition to give some states more time to align state Lifeline rules with changes to the federal program that added broadband as a supported service to the low-income program. With an FCC implementation deadline coming early in December, multiple states are expected to support the USTelecom petition in comments due to the commission Friday in docket 11-42 (see 1610180028). The association asked for temporary waiver of certain rules so Lifeline providers can continue enrolling consumers in the federal USF low-income subsidy support program based on state-specific criteria in 25 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. In comments posted Wednesday, the Missouri PSC said it won’t meet the FCC Dec. 2 deadline because it faces a lengthy rulemaking process. Historically, getting a required fiscal impact review from the state Department of Economic Development has taken “a few weeks to over a year,” it said. “As a general rule a minimum of six months is needed to complete a formal rulemaking.”
Competitive barriers limit new telecom network entrants and may mean higher prices for some services above “efficiently competitive levels” in the state, the California Public Utilities Commission said Tuesday. The CPUC released a proposed decision on telecom industry competition (docket I.15-11-007); commissioners may vote on it as soon as Dec. 1, the agency said in a news release. If commissioners adopt the proposal, they will order staff to “(a) continue to monitor developments in the telecommunications market; (b) obtain, compile, and publish actual residential broadband speeds obtainable by consumers throughout the state; (c) promote safe and non-discriminatory access to utility poles and conduits by cable and wireless companies; and (d) ensure that Public Purpose Programs, such as California LifeLine and the California Advanced Services Fund, continue to close the digital divide,” the CPUC said. “One particular bottleneck is access to utility poles, where the CPUC’s safety mandate meets, and must be reconciled with, the CPUC’s goal of a competitive market.” The agency said it’s not sure if wireless and VoIP growth has kept prices for landline services reasonable, or whether that question is relevant in a market where voice is usually bundled with broadband and other services. As technology advances, the digital divide has widened between geographic and economic groups in state, the CPUC said. Voice and internet access has rapidly converged, with wireless and cable-based VoIP quickly displacing landline telephones, and that has multiplied the economic and social importance of the telecom network, it said.
The California Public Utilities Commission may vote Dec. 1 or 15 on a rural call completion order, said a proposed CPUC decision Monday extending the statutory deadline in the proceeding by 60 days to Jan. 5. Commissioner Catherine Sandoval plans to prepare a draft order later this month that will address call completion, access and 911 issues and outages, including those that occurred after the April 1 transfer of the Verizon California wireline business to Frontier Communications, said the proposed decision in docket I.14-05-012. CPUC members plan to vote on the deadline extension Oct. 27, according to a meeting agenda. At commissioners' Oct. 13 meeting, Sandoval said it appeared software was to blame for the Frontier outage, but poor customer service exacerbated the problems. A Frontier official said the same day that the company “worked diligently” to resolve transition problems and is now operating in normal business mode (see 1610130059). In comments posted over the weekend, the telecom industry said it didn’t see major call completion problems in rural California, but a consumer group flagged spotty wireless service and deteriorating wireline plant (see 1610170035).
FairPoint won support for its request for hearing before the Maine Public Utilities Commission acts on a $500,000 proposed penalty for service quality violations (see 1610040021). In comments Friday in docket 2014-00376, the Telecommunications Association of Maine said it saw no harm in granting FairPoint a hearing. Not holding one could lead to litigation, "adding costs and delays which would appear to serve no one,” it commented. “Rejecting the request in FairPoint’s Motion would seem to promote speed over quality.” The Maine Office of the Public Advocate supported a hearing for reporting periods later than Q3 and Q4 2015 because it said the company had a chance to argue those periods at a technical conference May 18, 2015. For later reporting periods, the telco "should be given an additional opportunity to present evidence and argument concerning its failure to meet the service quality benchmarks,” OPA commented. In a letter Monday, FairPoint asked to respond to OPA’s comments by Thursday.
Washington state suffered no telecom outages in a storm that blew into the Pacific Northwest over the weekend, a Utilities and Transportation Commission spokesman said Monday. Meteorologists had predicted dangerously strong winds, but the storm wasn’t as bad as expected. Multiple surveyed carriers reported no problems from the weather in the area. “The storm turned out to be much weaker than expected,” said a Sprint spokesman. Carriers faced a bigger challenge from Hurricane Matthew, which struck the Southeast coast the previous weekend (see 1610130033 and 1610110038). Verizon used unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to inspect flooded cellsites in the Carolinas, the company said in a news release Friday. Verizon deployed Measure UAS quadcopters that can record and live-stream HD video and high-resolution photographs, it said. “The first flight to a site surrounded by water near Elm City, N.C. and the Tar River Reservoir showed engineers that the base station equipment -- which was elevated on stilts -- was not underwater and had not suffered visible damage,” Verizon said. “After determining the site was safe to access, Verizon’s Network team secured an air boat and refueled the generator, bringing the site back into service within hours.”
Alabama extended its deadline for alternative public safety radio access network (RAN) proposals to 15 business days after FirstNet announces a vendor for the national network, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said in a news release Friday. It also will accept anonymous questions about the request for proposal until Oct. 24, it said. Responses to the Alabama request for proposal were due Friday; it extended the deadline after multiple vendors said they would wouldn’t bid until FirstNet’s announcement, which is expected Nov. 1. Rivada made such an announcement last week (see 1610130032). “The state purposely chose to issue the RFP and receive responses prior to the announcement of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) nationwide partner to ensure the highest level of competition and largest number of responses possible,” the Alabama agency wrote. “Such an approach was intended to enable the best set of possible choices for the first responders and citizens of Alabama.” The state changed its mind after receiving six requests for a deadline extension and 12 requests to “entertain questions” about the RFP, it said. Rivada agreed last month to develop an alternative public safety broadband plan for the New Hampshire Department of Safety for the state to compare with a proposal that FirstNet will develop (see 1609070063). Arizona also has an RFP for alternative RAN plans, with responses due Oct. 31.
A state commission urged the FCC to delay processing several companies' applications to be Lifeline broadband providers until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit resolves states’ appeal of the FCC Lifeline order extending the low-income program to broadband. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission Public Utilities Division (PUD) submitted a request Thursday in docket 09-197 to hold in abeyance the application of Blue Jay Wireless for FCC designation as an eligible telecom carrier under the Lifeline broadband program. The Blue Jay application is one of the first since the FCC pre-empted states for Lifeline ETC designation. The PUD said it’s unresolved whether the FCC has authority to pre-empt states and issue its own designations, a question that is the subject of the D.C. Circuit case. It’s also unresolved what role state regulatory agencies will have in monitoring activities of federally designated broadband ETCs, a question that's the subject of a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission petition for clarification at the FCC, it said. “PUD is concerned about the potential negative impacts to the Lifeline market if the FCC grants ETC designation where statutory authority does not exist and the loss of what, to date, has been effective oversight by states, such as Oklahoma, of the ETCs participating in the Lifeline market.” OCC asked the FCC to hold off on several more applications in the docket Friday. Earlier last week, NARUC asked the D.C. Circuit to reject an FCC motion to suspend review of the Lifeline order pending agency resolution of petitions to reconsider parts of its recent overhaul of the low-income telecom subsidy program (see 1610120050).
The telecom industry and consumer groups rejected each other’s requests for rehearing at the California Public Utilities Commission on a decision in docket R.11-12-001 to charge telcos automatic daily fines of up to $25,000 for failure to meet service quality measures (see 1609300044). The Utility Reform Network, California Office of Ratepayer Advocates and other consumer groups rejected a Cox Communications protest that CPUC adopted the fines without adequate support legally or in the record. “Cox fails to demonstrate legal or factual error in its rehearing application,” they wrote in a joint response posted Friday. “Instead, Cox simply rehashes its policy arguments in opposition to several reporting rules and the penalty mechanism that the Decision added to General Order (G.O.) 133-D.” In a separate response Friday, Cox rejected the consumer groups’ protest that the commission closed the proceeding without imposing service quality reporting regulations on wireless carriers or interconnected VoIP providers. “The Commission cannot adopt service quality regulations that apply to VoIP services, and thereby, interconnected VoIP providers,” Cox responded. “Joint Consumers simply repeat arguments previously submitted and they fail to review or respond to record evidence that expressly refutes those arguments.” AT&T and CTIA in separate responses also urged the CPUC reject the consumer groups’ request.
Until FirstNet announces a network contract, Rivada won’t bid on any more state requests for proposal on alternative radio access networks, a company spokesman said Thursday. Rivada submitted a plan to FirstNet as part of industry coalition Rivada Mercury; a FirstNet decision is expected Nov. 1 (see 1606070037). “Given how close we are to a FirstNet decision … we are holding off on any further state RFP responses until we hear from FirstNet,” the Rivada spokesman emailed. “We remain confident that ours is the best solution for public safety nationwide. In the event we don't win FirstNet, we naturally will evaluate any state opportunities at that time.” Rivada agreed last month to develop an alternative public safety broadband plan for the New Hampshire Department of Safety for the state to compare with a proposal that will be developed by FirstNet (see 1609070063). Rivada hasn’t made any other state deals, the spokesman confirmed: “We are under contract with New Hampshire and we continue to work closely with them in accordance with that contract.”