Lifting a Pennsylvania restriction on municipal broadband could spur state smart city initiatives, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (D) said Wednesday. A Pennsylvania law forces cities and counties with broadband plans to ask their incumbent ISP to implement broadband before the governments can do so themselves. Changing the law “certainly would give us options that cities like Chattanooga have already been able to seize upon,” he said on a live-streamed Washington Post smart cities event. Google Fiber helped in Kansas City and other cities, he said. Pittsburgh could use better broadband, he said. “The amount of information that will be required and the broadband that will be needed will be possibly more than we can provide right now.” The city has dark fiber owned by the utility company, he said. “That could become really the backbone of a system that would then be able to be launched with wireless technology.” Pittsburgh has “been having conversations with DQE,” a subsidiary of the energy company Duquesne Light, he said. The mayor also spoke about Uber, which recently announced Pittsburgh as a test bed for its autonomous cars (see 1609070018). Peduto joked that fear of “robot cars” may be one of three reasons he isn’t re-elected, in addition to bike lanes and welcoming Syrian refugees into the city. People fear a self-driving car will cause an accident, but the reality is that humans cause many accidents, he said. “There will be accidents, but if the greater goal is to make the streets safer in the long term, we have to begin at some point, and we can’t wait for regulation to catch up to innovation.”

Motorola Solutions agreed to buy Spillman Technologies, a closely held provider of public safety software solutions for computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and records management systems (RMS), the acquirer said in a Monday news release. It “demonstrates our commitment to expand our smart public safety portfolio and provide agencies of all sizes with a full suite of solutions for the command center, from call processing equipment to CAD to RMS to land mobile radio and LTE dispatching,” said Bruce Brda, Motorola Solutions executive vice president-products and services.

The California Public Utilities Commission is seeking comment on how to modify the state LifeLine program for low-income households in light of the recent FCC Lifeline order, CPUC Commissioner Catherine Sandoval said in a ruling Thursday. The ruling also asks questions on several other issues on the state program. “The key policy areas the Commission may need to address as a result of the FCC’s Order include: the future role of the California LifeLine Program, the services supported by California LifeLine, the defining characteristics of a low-income household, and the entity tasked with the responsibility of enrolling consumers,” CPUC said. “More generally, this Ruling invites parties to suggest ways this Commission may advance its decades-old commitment to California LifeLine in light of the FCC’s 'modernized' federal Lifeline program and California’s statutory commitments to universal and affordable telecommunications service including basic telephone service and its policies to promote access to broadband internet access services.” The comments on the FCC order are due Oct. 7, replies Oct. 17, CPUC said. States have sued the FCC over the Lifeline order, and at a July NARUC meeting Sandoval said California may want to opt out of national Lifeline verification because the state already has a strong third-party verifier (see 1607270020).

AT&T sued Nashville over the one-touch, make-ready ordinance passed last week. The lawsuit (in Pacer), filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, was expected (see 1609210065). “Tennessee municipalities do not have jurisdiction to regulate pole attachments,” an AT&T spokesman said: After working with the mayor, council members, Nashville Electric Service and others, “we have no other option but to challenge this unlawful ordinance in federal court.” The Nashville Metro Council passed the one-touch policy to speed the rollout of Google Fiber, a competitor to incumbent AT&T. The law is meant to speed network rollouts by new entrants by allowing all pole attachment work to happen in a single visit by a crew approved by the pole owner. Currently, each existing provider on a pole sends a separate crew to move its line to make room for the new one, a process that Google says causes long delays (see 1609020013). AT&T's suit argued that FCC pole attachment regulations pre-empt the Nashville action. The ordinance conflicts with Metro Nashville’s charter under Tennessee law and impairs AT&T’s existing contract with Metro Nashville in violation of the U.S. and Tennessee constitutions, the telco ISP said. Mayor Megan Barry stood by the ordinance. “One Touch Make Ready has been litigated in the court of public opinion, and the public overwhelmingly supports this measure designed to speed up the deployment of high-speed fiber in Nashville,” the Democrat said in a statement. “Now, we hope that this federal litigation is quickly resolved so that we can get on with the business of expanding access to gigabit internet throughout Davidson County.” The city and the council saw the suit coming, "but we hoped common sense maybe could prevail and AT&T would see that Nashville residents overwhelmingly supported One Touch policy," emailed Council Member Anthony Davis, who sponsored the ordinance. "I know our legal department will vigorously defend our rights to regulate pole policy and to decide what occurs in our city right-of-way." AT&T previously sued Louisville, Kentucky, for passing a one-touch policy (see 1602260043). Pole attachment policies are expected to be a continuing challenge for Google as it expands its gigabit network (see 1609070026).

The Iowa Utilities Board OK'd a contract for state telecom relay services and captioned telephone relay service to Hamilton Relay, the IUB said in a news release Wednesday. The contract is for Jan. 1, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2019, and may be extended for three years, it said. The board didn't say how much the contract is worth.

Governors are more aware of cybersecurity, but state chief information security officers (CISOs) still lack funding, said a report Tuesday by Deloitte and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). More than 60 percent of state officials said cybersecurity is discussed at least quarterly at executive leadership meetings, compared with 48 percent in 2014. Nearly one-third of CISOs provided governors with monthly cybersecurity reports this year, up from 17 percent two years ago. There’s little funding: more than half of state cybersecurity budgets represent 0-2 percent of overall technology budgets, the report said. Four in five respondents said inadequate funding is a top barrier to effectively addressing cyberthreats, and 51 percent pointed to the lack of cybersecurity professionals. CISOs said they considered threats targeting employees -- phishing, pharming, social engineering and ransomware -- the most prevalent threat in the year ahead. The report found a “confidence gap” between CISOs and state officials on how prepared their states are to handle security threats: about two in three state officials said they’re very confident about defending against external cyberthreats, but 27 percent of CISOs felt that way. Deloitte and NASCIO received responses this year from CISOs in 49 states and territories, and 96 state business and elected officials. A NASCIO report released Monday said most states outsource at least some IT infrastructure (see 1609190022).

More than two-thirds of states outsource at least some IT infrastructure, up from 58 percent in 2015, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers reported Monday. Also, 63 percent use a managed services model for some or all IT operations, up from 55 percent a year ago, NASCIO said. Four out of five states outsource at least some IT applications and services, little changed from 2015 but up from 42 percent in 2010. About three in four use a shared services model to provide IT services, up from 66 percent in 2010. Only 31 percent of states still own and operate all IT assets and operations, mostly unchanged since 2010. State CIOs said they plan to continue reducing state-owned-and-operated data centers and increasing outsourcing in the future. But one in five CIOs expected to bring certain outsourced operations back in house, NASCIO said: “This may reflect lessons learned from a first generation of outsourcing contracts and reflect a better appreciation of what types of services are a better fit for outsourcing.” Fifty-eight percent said they considered data governance and management to be a key part of strategic and operational plans, and 46 percent have data governance policies, a big increase from 5 percent with policies in 2015. NASCIO worked with CompTIA and Grant Thornton LLP on the report, surveying state CIOs between June and July. NASCIO said 50 member states and territories responded.

The Vermont Department of Public Service sought more time to testify on service quality reporting rules for FairPoint Communications. The Public Service Board is considering adjusting reporting rules, and the company said it needs to report service quality only in locations with no voice competition (see 1608080030). The board is considering a Sept. 16 request by DPS to file testimony Sept. 27, and allow FairPoint to serve discovery Oct. 7, a board spokeswoman emailed Monday. “The Department requests this extension because FairPoint advised the Department that FairPoint intends to file a supplement to its response to the Department's initial round discovery requests on September 16,” DPS said in its motion. The extra time will allow DPS to review the information, it said. Maine, which recently passed a law deregulating FairPoint, also is looking at the telco's service quality reporting (see 1609130057).

The FCC received an update on state broadband initiatives from state members of the Federal State Joint Conference on Advanced Services, said a NARUC ex parte filing Friday. State Chairman Gregg Sayre of New York submitted a May survey in docket 16-245 on the status of state programs to promote broadband deployment.

FCC policy doesn't control “all uses, nationally, of disaggregated telecommunications subscription data,” the California Public Utilities Commission told U.S. District Court in San Francisco. AT&T, Comcast, CTIA, Verizon and other industry plaintiffs want to stop the CPUC from enforcing a May 3 ruling compelling ISPs to disclose subscriber data to The Utility Reform Network (TURN) or other third parties as part of a state investigation of market competition. In May, the court issued a preliminary injunction against the CPUC (see 1605240014). NARUC said a permanent injunction could disrupt the authority of state commissions, and likely would be appealed (see 1607290037). In testimony last month, the ISPs said the CPUC can't work around FCC disclosure regulations by asking providers rather than the FCC for the data. But in a reply (in Pacer) Thursday, the commission said there’s "no functional or substantive difference" between subscription data collected and shared with CPUC consultants under the state's Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act and the subscription data at issue in this case. Federal statute provides an equal role to states in deployment, adoption and promotion of competition for advanced telecom services, it said. TURN supported the CPUC, in a separate reply (in Pacer). State agencies shouldn't need to ask a federal agency's permission to use state-collected data that was also provided to the federal agency, TURN said. "This would be an unworkable result that would thwart both the CPUC’s efforts to carry out its statutory duties under state and federal law and TURN’s ability to meaningfully participate in proceedings before the CPUC." The court plans to hear the case Sept. 29, emailed CPUC attorney Chris Witteman.