Georgia will stop kids younger than 16 from getting social media accounts without parental consent. Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed a mandatory age-verification bill (SB-351) on Tuesday despite tech industry groups seeking a veto (see 2404020055). “As social media has taken more and more room in our young people’s lives, we have seen increases in mental health struggles and other negative behaviors and attitudes,” Kemp said. “We cannot continue to sit by and do nothing as young Georgians develop addictions and disorders and suffer at the hands of online antagonists.” However, NetChoice General Counsel Carl Szabo said the law “breaches Georgians’ privacy, endangers security, violates constitutional rights, and creates a one-size-fits all ‘solution’ that erases parents.”

No “good cause” exists to shorten time to respond to a petition related to the federal affordable connectivity program (ACP) ending, the California Broadband & Video Association (CalBroadband) said Monday in a filing at the California Public Utilities Commission. The Utility Reform Network (TURN) last week asked the CPUC to pause awarding grants and quickly modify grant rules to ensure service remains affordable after ACP ends (see 2404150062). Since TURN’s proposal “would fundamentally change” the CPUC’s 2022 decision adopting Infrastructure Grant Account rules, parties should have the full 30 days to respond that CPUC rules require, CalBroadband said. The cable association foreshadowed that it will ask the CPUC to deny TURN’s petition and move quickly to grant pending infrastructure grant applications.

Don’t interpret the quiet to mean no work is being done on 911 redundancy, Frontier Communications said in a Friday letter to the West Virginia Public Service Commission. The carrier responded to the West Virginia E911 Council complaining in an April 8 letter that neither Frontier nor the West Virginia Department of Emergency Management has shown the council a feasible and affordable way to solve diversity and redundancy problems for the state’s 51 public safety answering points. The council urged the PSC to open a general investigation in response to its complaint in case 23-0921-T-C about 911 outages (see 2312070015). However, replying Friday, Frontier said its work with the department “is currently in the stages of proof of concept” and the department has asked the company to keep information confidential.

The Colorado General Assembly supported permanent high-cost support on Friday. The House, which had earlier passed HB-1234, voted 58-2 Friday to concur with Senate amendments and 51-9 to pass the bill a second time. The bill would indefinitely extend the state's high-cost support mechanism, which provides subsidies to a dozen rural telecom providers and is scheduled to sunset Sept. 1. The Senate passed the bill last week (see 2404160026). Also that day, the House voted 58-2 to concur with Senate amendments and 51-9 to repass a kids’ social media bill (HB-1136). It would require the state’s education department to create elementary and secondary school curricula on social media’s mental health issues (see 2404120013). Gov. Jared Polis (D) will consider the bills next. Meanwhile, the Colorado Senate voted 33-0 to approve a biometric data privacy bill (HB-1130) and 19-14 in favor of a 911 bill (SB-139). The House previously passed HB-1130 but must concur with Senate changes. The House hasn’t considered SB-139, which would create an additional state 911 fee (See 2404160036).

Nevada could soon get a final OK for volume 2 of its initial plan for the broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program, said Brian Mitchell, the state’s broadband office director, on a Broadband.io webinar Friday. Nevada just needs the National Institute of Standards and Technology to concur with the approval, said Mitchell, explaining that NIST is NTIA’s grant manager and fiscal partner. The office recently completed the first phase of its challenge process and is currently in the rebuttal phase, he said. Volume 2 approval could allow Nevada to move into its subgrantee selection process this summer, he said. NTIA’s recommended changes for volume 2 were mostly “small and kind of technical in nature,” said Mitchell. Nevada is “open to all reliable technologies” for high-speed internet, said the director: Even wireless and satellite technologies need to connect to fiber somewhere. Therefore, the broadband office seeks to “extend fiber as deeply as possible … so that it can facilitate whatever last-mile technology makes most sense for any given location,” he said. Nevada's network should be scalable, added Mitchell. Don’t put in “a one-lane road when you're going to need a … four-lane road in the future,” he said. “It’s unlikely that Congress is ever going to … appropriate $65 billion for broadband again.”

Verizon and Comcast took more than two-thirds of the pie as Pennsylvania awarded $204 million in broadband grants Thursday. The Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA) announced awards using funding from the U.S. Treasury’s Capital Projects Fund. The authority said that the awards for 53 projects in 42 counties will connect 40,000 homes and businesses. Verizon received nearly $78.4 million (38% of available funding), while Comcast took about $61.7 million (30%). Among other private ISP winners, Windstream won nearly $12 million and Frontier Communications received $3.5 million. About $200 million in private spending will match the government cash, the PBDA added. The state required a minimum of 100 Mbps symmetrical download and upload speeds for the projects, which must be completed by Dec. 31, 2026. “These projects will leverage historic federal funding and private investment to connect communities to the internet,” said PBDA Executive Director Brandon Carson.

California Public Utilities Commission staff proposed ways to let low-income consumers apply for the state's LifeLine program without providing the last four digits of their social security numbers. In a Friday order in docket R.20-02-008, CPUC Administrative Law Judge Robyn Purchia sought comments on the plan by May 10, with replies due May 24. “This staff proposal recommends revisions to the application, identity verification, and eligibility determination processes to create a defined path for individuals without SSNs to apply for California LifeLine and when qualified, to begin receiving California LifeLine benefits,” said the April 11 plan, which was attached to the ALJ’s order. Consumer advocates in January comments urged the CPUC to make such a policy (see 2401290041).

Last week’s multistate 911 outage is under investigation, additional state and local officials said after the FCC and others noted Thursday they were examining Wednesday disruptions in Texas, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota (see 2404180053). The Nebraska Public Service Commission “will make a determination after more facts from [public safety answering points] and carriers are collected,” Commissioner Tim Schram (R) told us Friday. Deputy Fire Chief Billy Samuels of Clark County, Nevada, said in an email Thursday that the “cause of the outage remains under investigation.” On Wednesday night during the outage, Clark County’s Office of Emergency Management activated a multi-agency coordination center, while the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department “established unified command to ensure that police, fire and medical needs from the community were not unmet,” said Samuels. “Through this coordinated effort, an alternative solution was established, but full 911 service was restored before this was implemented,” he said. The county doesn’t know of emergencies that went unaddressed during the outage, he said.

Nebraska will be the 17th state with a comprehensive privacy law. Gov. Jim Pillen (R) on Thursday signed a legislative package (LB-1074) containing a proposal from LB-1294 from Sen. Eliot Bostar (D). Microsoft supported the bill (see 2404150022) but Consumer Reports says the Nebraska policy, which is similar to a Texas privacy law, doesn’t cover enough businesses and lacks teeth (see 2404120047). “Nebraska lawmakers should use the next legislative session to make much needed improvements to strengthen this law,” CR Policy Analyst Matt Schwartz said Friday.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) supported a broadband bill aimed at streamlining providers’ access to public rights of way (ROW). On Thursday, Kelly signed HB-2588, which would apply to counties rules on nondiscrimination and neutrality that cities already use. Internet providers supported a similar bill at a Feb. 29 hearing (see 2402290044).