The New York State administration railed at Verizon Wireless after the company closed call centers in New York City and Rochester. The company also closed five other centers in Maine, Nebraska, Connecticut and California, affecting 3,200 employees, a Verizon spokeswoman said. “This is an egregious example of corporate abuse -- among the worst we have witnessed during the six years of this administration,” said a spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). “Verizon’s negligence is astounding and as a result, hard-working New Yorkers will lose their jobs.” Cuomo directed the state Department of Labor to assist employees, while the governor’s office tries to “reverse the impact of Verizon’s reckless decision,” the spokesman said. Communications Workers of America President Chris Shelton vowed to “keep up the fight” against Verizon. “It’s corporate greed at its worst,” he said. Verizon will ask affected employees to seek other positions within the company, relocate with $10,000 in company assistance to similar positions in other call centers, or accept a severance package, the Verizon spokeswoman emailed. “The key driver behind this decision is to realign our real estate portfolio and Customer Service operations to make the best use of extra capacity in the remaining locations. … This was a very difficult but necessary business decision.” Verizon will give affected employees two paid days off and reimburse travel expenses up to $500 to visit other call center sites, she said.

The FCC Wireline Bureau modified procedures for state commissions to access nonpublic Form 477 subscription data. “Each commission wishing to access, or to continue to access, shared data for its state must execute an updated data-sharing letter of agreement,” the FCC said in a public notice Thursday in docket 11-10. The revisions are part of the bureau’s modernization of the secure online repository for the shared data, it said. What states may do with carriers’ Form 477 data has been central to a court dispute between telecom companies and the California Public Utilities California and The Utility Reform Network (see 1609160054). “This notice proves the point that the CPUC and TURN were making before the federal court,” TURN staff attorney Christine Mailloux emailed Thursday. “It was never the FCC’s intent to prohibit state commissions from using Form 477 data in their own proceedings or to disclose this data under specific circumstances and proper protections.” The new form letter clarifies that FCC and bureau rules “are primarily concerned with unlimited ‘public’ disclosure of the data through a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] or state public records process than the scenario we have in this California case,” she said. But the FCC notice doesn’t address a state’s authority to require regulated entities to provide data to the state commission and then share that data under protection to third parties, she said. Rather, the FCC notice appears to apply only when a state commission requests Form 477 data directly from the FCC, she said.

Maryland first responders in Prince George’s County rolled out a smartphone app for alerting CPR-trained citizens of cardiac emergencies nearby. The county’s Fire/Emergency Medical Service Department will use the PulsePoint Respond app for iOS and Android, PulsePoint said in a news release Wednesday. The app, which can be used by anyone trained in CPR, also notifies users of the location of the closest automated external defibrillator. The department is the first in the National Capital Region to adopt the app, said Fire Chief Marc Bashoor. “It gives our residents and visitors the ability to know when a cardiac arrest is occurring close by, to respond quickly, and to attempt potentially lifesaving CPR while our paramedics travel to the scene.”

Mobile data speeds in California are getting faster but less consistent, according to the California Public Utilities Commission mobile field testing program. In a blog post Tuesday, CPUC Senior Analyst Rob Osborn said average download speeds increased in spring 2016 from six months before, but so did the standard deviation from the mean. “For one session, you might get 2 megabits per second, and another session, 24.” Osborn said it’s “hard to say” what that means, “but it appears the likelihood of getting the average speed at a particular location is lower than before.” Verizon average downstream speed increased by about 2 Mbps to 16 Mbps from fall 2015 to spring 2016, AT&T speeds increased the same amount to 14 Mbps, and T-Mobile increased by about 1 Mbps to 13 Mbps, CPUC found. Sprint average download speeds remained flat at slightly more than 8 Mbps. But over the same time period the standard deviation as a percentage of the downstream speed also increased: to 42 percent from 35 percent for Verizon, to 44 percent from 35 percent for AT&T, to 46 percent from 36 percent for T-Mobile, and to 43 percent from 40 percent for Sprint. The numbers show industry upgrades aren't keeping up with Californians' demand, said Tellus Venture President Steve Blum, a broadband consultant for local governments. “Mobile carriers are investing in more and better infrastructure, but judging from the CPUC’s measurements, not quickly enough to keep pace with Californians,” he wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers released an updated strategic plan. NASCIO adopted the plan at its annual conference last month in Orlando. “While the plan didn't change significantly, we did emphasize some new objectives that reflect the current needs of state CIOs,” said NASCIO President Mark Raymond in a news release Thursday. “These changes will ensure that NASCIO continues to align the organization's activities to ensure we're providing our members with the support, research and information they've grown to expect.” Also at the conference, NASCIO released reports on cybersecurity and state IT outsourcing (see 1609200026 and 1609190022).

North Carolina must overhaul municipal broadband policies or risk leaving rural areas behind, said the Institute for Local Self-Reliance Tuesday. The state should remove barriers to broadband investment by cooperatives, allow communities to decide whether and how to deploy municipal broadband, expand internet access from existing local networks and create a state program offering matching grants or a revolving loan fund, the report said. It criticized the state law that has prohibited Wilson Greenlight from expanding into neighboring communities including Pinetops (see 1609270035). The FCC pre-empted a 2011 state law, but the federal agency was overturned by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The institute also condemned a 1999 North Carolina law limiting electric cooperatives’ access to capital for telecom. “Local leaders are better equipped to solve their problems than micro-managers from Raleigh,” it said. “Some communities will embrace cooperatives, some may find ways of attracting private companies, and some may choose to work with Wilson or duplicate it. This report recommends that North Carolina remove its barriers to local choice and focus on encouraging more sources of investment rather than focusing largely on firms based outside of the state.”

The New York Public Service Commission plans hearings in its Verizon copper probe starting March 2, an administrative law judge ruled Friday. The PSC is investigating the quality of Verizon’s legacy copper services and the telco’s willingness to make upgrades to copper in areas where it hasn’t rolled out fiber (see 1608010047). Staff and intervenor testimony is due Dec. 9, and rebuttal testimony from Verizon Feb. 3, ALJ Sean Mullany ruled in docket 16-C-0122.

The New Hampshire Department of Safety hopes to brief gubernatorial candidates on FirstNet “in the coming weeks,” but nothing is planned yet, the state’s FirstNet single point of contact (SPOC) told us. It's among at least eight states and territories that will have new governors in 2017 who will need quickly to get up to speed on the national public safety network to inform state decisions next year on whether to opt in (see 1610050026). No direct conversations have taken place, but both candidates are on the state’s Executive Council and heard a FirstNet presentation during a council meeting, New Hampshire SPOC John Stevens emailed Friday. The major candidates in the race are Colin Van Ostern (D) and Chris Sununu (R).

The enforcement division of California’s telecom regulator protested a calling-card company application to register as an interexchange carrier. ComNet applied Sept. 2 to provide resold interexchange services in California as a prepaid debit calling card company. But in a protest filed Monday, the California Public Utility Commission Consumer Protection and Enforcement Division said ComNet has been operating in the state without CPUC authority and failed to disclose in its application that California and Michigan revoked its telecom licenses. Rather than grant the application, the CPUC should impose penalties for rule violations, it said.

The California Public Utilities Commission plans to vote Nov. 10 on a $2.86 million broadband grant to Cal.net to provide internet and VoIP services to underserved rural communities in Amador, Calaveras and Alpine counties, said a draft order released Tuesday. The money would come from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). The proposed order OKs a project that covers about 455 square miles with 25/4 Mbps broadband speeds. Cal.net also plans to provide service to five anchor institutions and eight fire stations, and provide an interconnected public safety data communications network. Before CPUC votes on the grant, it plans to vote Oct. 13 on a draft resolution to reduce the surcharge rate of the CASF for end-user intrastate charges to zero from 0.464 percent. The reduction is necessary to avoid exceeding the fund’s cap this month, CPUC said in a revised draft order released Tuesday. “Since the estimated total CASF monthly surcharge collected by carriers is about $4.5 million, maintaining the surcharge rate at 0.464% would exceed the $315 million cap by the amount of $8.5 million on December 1, 2016.”