Alabama will re-up its statewide 911 board until Oct. 1, 2026. Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed SB-136 to enact the law Monday.

A Minnesota Public Utilities Commission proceeding on revoking LTD Broadband’s eligible telecom carrier (ETC) designation may end, said a Friday agreement among the parties including LTD, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), the state Commerce Department, the Minnesota Telecom Alliance and the Minnesota Rural Electric Association. The pact to resolve docket 22-221 follows LTD asking to relinquish ETC designation for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support (see 2405020042). The parties agreed that LTD won’t withdraw that petition and the others won’t oppose it.

Apparently undaunted by tech industry opposition, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed a bill (HB-1891) requiring age-verification for social media use. Lee’s signature wasn’t surprising because he sought legislation requiring parental consent for kids younger than 18 on social networks (see 2403120065). However, NetChoice urged a veto, saying the law wouldn’t survive a court challenge if it were enacted (see 2404300017).

AT&T will get a new certificate of public convenience and necessity in Idaho for its restructuring that will merge affiliate AT&T Corp. into the newly formed AT&T Enterprises, the Idaho Public Utilities Commission said Thursday. Also in the order, the commission required that AT&T Enterprises provide information about how many basic local exchange customers it has and the services it offers, the PUC said.

Digital equity and 911 bills passed the Hawaii State Legislature on Wednesday. The House and Senate voted unanimously for the bills after a conference committee reached consensus on final versions. The digital equity bill (HB-2359) would require the state to implement a grant program by Jan. 1. The 911 bill (HB-2339) would remove the term “enhanced” from state 911 law so that Hawaii can fund future emergency-number technologies. The bills next need sign-off from Gov. Josh Green (D).

Lumen disagreed with a local 911 authority on whether the Colorado Public Utilities Commission should be required to investigate all “apparent” outages of basic emergency services (BES). Separately, the Colorado PUC opened a rulemaking on incarcerated people’s communications services (IPCS). Current state rules on 911 outages say that PUC staff “shall commence an informal investigation regarding each apparent basic emergency service outage meeting criteria established by the 9-1-1 Advisory Task Force.” The PUC should change “shall” to “may,” Lumen commented Wednesday in docket 23R-0577T. Making it optional wouldn’t reduce the commission’s oversight authority, the carrier argued. “It would simply allow the Commission the discretion to initiate an investigation.” Use of the word “apparent” in the current rule “sweeps within its scope occurrences that are not in fact BES outages yet grants the Commission no discretion,” said Lumen: That’s inefficient at best, the company said, stressing it’s not saying the commission shouldn’t investigate BES outages but instead is saying a probe might not always be warranted. “For example, a fiber cut by a third party that results in an interruption of BES services should not always require an investigation.” However, the Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority argued that the commission “would be delinquent if it did not require investigation of apparent outages of [BES] to identify means of avoiding future outages and better mitigating or more expeditiously remediating future outages which do occur.” Also, the Boulder authority noted that “apparent outages subject to investigation are only those meeting criteria of the 9-1-1 Advisory Task Force,” which considers factors such as when an outage affects multiple public safety answering points, lasts more than four hours or repeats in the same area over a short period of time. Meanwhile, the Colorado PUC sought comments by May 31 and replies by June 14 on an NPRM to change to change IPCS rules in response to two recent state laws. A 2021 law included requirements for reports and testing, while a 2023 law expanded the definition of covered communications services to include video calls, email and messaging, said the Monday notice.

LTD Broadband asked to partly relinquish its eligible telecom carrier designation in Minnesota due to the FCC canceling the company’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support. In a Wednesday letter to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, CEO Corey Hauer said the FCC decision “has left us disappointed and puzzled, as [it] seems to contradict the very purpose of RDOF: to connect unserved and underserved Americans.” LTD seeks to give up ETC status only for RDOF, not for the Connect America Fund Phase II, he clarified. Hauer’s letter marks a turnaround from November when he told the state commission that he still wanted to defend his company and keep the ETC designation (see 2311160039). State telecom and electric industry groups had asked the PUC to revoke the company’s ETC certificate (docket 22-221). The Minnesota Telecom Alliance “is pleased to see this contested case come to closure,” MTA President Brent Christensen said Thursday. “LTD’s decision … is very appropriate given the recent decisions of the FCC.” Hauer told us in an email Thursday that his company “doesn't intend to relinquish ETC designation in any other state.” It's doing so in Minnesota, said Hauer, because MTA and the Minnesota Rural Electric Association (MREA), supported by Minnesota’s attorney general office and commerce department, “refused to pause” the proceeding to revoke the broadband company's ETC status while LTD challenged the FCC decision at the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. “They did so under the false premise that we were in imminent danger of being awarded RDOF funds without … saying how much they hate competition and how only MTA or MREA members are capable of building broadband networks," he said. "I am not going to let them waste more of our time and money.” If LTD wins against the FCC on appeal, “I expect to aggressively build our RDOF areas in entirety,” the CEO added.

Colorado state senators supported transferring authority for awarding high-cost support to the state broadband office from a broadband deployment board in the governor's IT office. The Senate voted 35-0 to approve HB-1336. Previously, the House passed the bill (see [Ref:2404170063) but will vote again on concurring with Senate changes.

Iowa extended a sunset on the state's small-cells law by a decade until July 1, 2035. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed HF-2175 on Wednesday. Missouri is considering a five-year extension of a similar law preempting local governments on right-of-way access to try to streamline 5G infrastructure deployment.

The Association of American Railroads appealed an ISP access case to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The association notified the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia about the appeal Wednesday in the district court’s docket 1:23-cv-00815-DJN-WEF. Last month, Judge David Novak dismissed the railroad association’s lawsuit against state officials including Virginia State Corporation Commission Judge Jehmal Hudson (see 2404170052). The railroads disagree with a 2023 state law that gave ISPs access rights to railroad property. The district court rejected each count of the complaint for various reasons, including lack of standing, failure to state a claim and sovereign immunity.