Minnesota released its final BEAD proposal for public comment Thursday, as expected (see 2508270070), complying with NTIA's revised rules. The state will award "more than half" of its BEAD-eligible locations with fiber, its Department of Employment and Economic Development said in a news release. Other states have also released their revised final proposals in recent days and are now accepting comments, including Iowa, Mississippi and New Mexico. The latter announced Tuesday that it had awarded 44% of its funding to fiber, 40% to fixed wireless, and 16% to low earth orbit satellite providers.
Brightspeed won more than $22 million in BEAD funding to offer fiber across six states, the company said Tuesday. Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin each awarded funding to the company, which said it will reach nearly 74,000 homes once its networks are deployed. "The BEAD program accelerates that mission, unlocking an unprecedented opportunity to deliver life-changing connections that empower families, fuel businesses and ignite local economies. And we’re only just getting started," said Brightspeed CEO Michel Combes. "We are actively pursuing even more BEAD funding to expand our impact in the states we serve.”
North Carolina fiber operator Kinetic is offering $10,000 for information leading to arrests and convictions for vandalism to its copper and fiber infrastructure, it said Friday. Kinetic said there have been multiple incidents in recent weeks, with some customers around Pinebluff, North Carolina, southwest of Raleigh, having lost service as many as five times since mid-July due to copper thefts.
Vermont's Otter Creek Communications Union District (CUD) completed its fiber broadband construction "ahead of schedule and under budget," the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB) said Tuesday. The project, which reached 3,626 unserved and underserved areas, was completed with $2.99 million remaining. The CUD and VCBB negotiated an agreement with Consolidated Communications, Fidium and GoNetSpeed on construction, service quality and fair pricing. VCBB Executive Director Christine Hallquist highlighted the project as an "example of a CUD strategically reviewing the current level of service in their area, acknowledging the best course of action was to partner with the existing telecom providers serving most addresses, and then holding them accountable to the community."
The FCC would likely be able to do little to block state laws regulating AI, New Street’s Blair Levin told investors Monday. “Case law suggests that where the FCC does not have authority to regulate, it does not have the authority to preempt the states from regulating,” Levin wrote.
Connecticut is investigating unauthorized charges added to AT&T customers' accounts, state Attorney General William Tong (D) announced Monday. The move comes after former AT&T employee Katie Barnaby of Stafford, Connecticut, was charged with computer crimes associated with adding charges between 2021 and 2022. State police also found similar schemes in Michigan, said a news release, where "multiple store managers allegedly directed employees to add certain unauthorized services to all customer accounts to earn bonuses ranging from $300 to $3,000" to achieve a 90% "close rate” on those services.
The pass-through provision of Maryland's digital ad tax doesn't withstand First Amendment scrutiny, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a Friday opinion, reversing and remanding the case to the U.S. District Court for Maryland for further deliberation (see 2411010020). "The states are free to make controversial policy," wrote Judge Julius Richardson in the unanimous opinion (docket 24-1727): "But with that freedom comes constraint."
Starlink parent SpaceX urged Virginia to reconsider its final BEAD plans, saying the commonwealth failed to comply with NTIA's new program rules. "Simply put, Virginia has put its heavy thumb on the scale in favor of expensive, slow-to-build fiber bias over speedy, low cost, and technology neutral competition," the company said in a letter Thursday. SpaceX accused Virginia of failing to run a competitive process, not being technology neutral, and disregarding program rules.
T-Mobile defended its hiring practices in response to the Center for Accessible Technology's (CforAT) petition for the California Public Utilities Commission to reopen its docket on T-Mobile's 2020 acquisition of Sprint (see 2003110043). The company said in a filing posted Wednesday (docket A1807011) that the group's petition is "procedurally improper," and any compliance issues should be resolved through the CPUC's existing enforcement mechanisms. CforAT petitioned the CPUC in May, saying it "appears" that T-Mobile isn't complying with several "mandatory merger conditions" based on a March letter from the company to the FCC.
The California Public Utilities Commission will consider a resolution to approve four grants totaling nearly $200,000 to fund community technology programs. The digital divide grant program is funded by "an allocation of a percentage of revenues" generated from wireless telecom facilities on state-owned property. Commissioners will consider the awards during a meeting Sept. 18.