VoIP providers raised concerns about a possible California rulemaking to consider changes to licensing requirements and other obligations for internet-based voice. Consumer advocates applauded the California Public Utilities Commission for looking into an issue that affects USF support. Commissioners plan to consider the proposed order instituting rulemaking (OIR), plus items on state LifeLine and Starlink eligible telecom carrier status, at their Thursday meeting.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
Low-income and community advocates supported consumer groups' petition to require low-cost broadband plans for all Californians. The California Public Utilities Commission received responses Wednesday to an amended petition in docket R.20-02-008. As they did earlier this month on the original petition (see 2208020033), ISPs warned that the state could risk losing broadband funding if the CPUC modified an April decision on rules for the state’s $2 billion last-mile federal funding account (FFA). Granting the petition "would ensure that the families who need access to affordable and reliable internet the most would finally be able to receive it without having to choose between paying their bills, grocery shopping or paying their internet bill,” said Alliance for a Better Community, a social justice nonprofit. “It would also aid in ending preferential treatment for high income broadband users over the needs of low-income users." LA-Tech.org, a nonprofit that helps low-income people find tech internships, also supported the change: "Low Income communities could be priced out of reliable broadband internet, depriving them of equitable access to health services and remote job opportunities.” If the CPUC fails to protect affordability, “the state risks funding high-speed broadband infrastructure projects that do not result in affordable service for unserved and underserved communities,” said the Institute for Local Self-Reliance: Reject any provider arguments to “wait to study the problem or collect data.” USTelecom countered that the “amended petition is procedurally improper” because it “fails to demonstrate new facts, materially changed circumstances, or misconceptions of law or fact.” Contrary to the public interest, the consumer groups' proposed changes would delay FFA implementation and discourage participation, which would make it harder for the state to use federal American Rescue Plan Act funding, the industry group said.
State broadband offices are adapting to much larger sums of cash than they had in years past, due to recent federal laws, said a Tennessee official at a virtual Broadband Breakfast event Wednesday. Building broadband “to and through” anchor institutions can sometimes be the best option to reach rural communities, said New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI) and the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition in a Wednesday report.
The Nebraska Public Service Commission will seek comments on implementing the Precision Agriculture Infrastructure Grant Act, which was enacted in April. Commissioners voted 5-0 for the item in docket BEAD-1, at a livestreamed meeting Tuesday. Comments will be due Sept. 30, with replies due Oct. 28.
Maine ISPs balked at a pole owners’ plan to have attachers cover 80% of the costs of a state database for pole attachments, in reply comments Friday at the Maine Public Utilities Commission. Connecticut needn’t move forward with a proposed single-visit pole transfer (SVT) framework, industry said in Thursday comments at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA).
California legislators killed a social media bill that would have held platforms civilly liable for addicting children, after opposition from the web industry and free-speech advocates. But some other controversial internet bills made it through Friday’s cutoff for fiscal committee votes. Bills on broadband, free inmate calls and the 988 mental-health hotline also advanced to floor votes.
Funding public education was the “main motivation” for a Maryland digital ad tax and a ban on passing on the cost to consumers, the state said in a supplemental brief Friday at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore (case 1:21-cv-00410-LKG). “But in addressing this funding need, the legislature sought to achieve other objectives,” including “greater equity and fairness in taxation and the modernization of Maryland tax laws, not only to adapt to changes in the State’s economy but also to encourage taxed entities to change for the better.” The pass-through ban ensures the digital ad service providers pay the tax that will fund public education improvements, the state said. Judge Lydia Griggsby said at oral argument earlier this month the ban implicates speech but sought more briefs on state interest and other questions (see 2207130001). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees “no evidence of any substantial interest served by the pass-through prohibition, nor is there evidence that the pass-through prohibition is appropriately tailored to any such interest,” the plaintiff said in its brief. The chamber urged facial invalidation of the pass-through prohibition that it said is a “a content-based ban on speech” or, at minimum, “unconstitutionally overbroad.” Maryland disagreed it’s unconstitutional. “Directly imposing a charge by billing it constitutes commercial conduct that may be regulated, and even punished criminally, without implicating the First Amendment.” The law constrains a taxpayer’s speech only if it's integral to “the unlawful conduct of direct pass-through,” said the state: It wouldn’t "prevent a taxpayer from including on an invoice whatever message it wished to convey about the digital ad tax, including the amount of the taxpayer’s annual digital ad gross revenue tax estimated to be attributable to the invoiced transaction, or, indeed, any other subject.”
New York Public Service Commissioners cleared a revised Charter plan to implement audit recommendations through a unanimous vote on a consent agenda at a Thursday meeting. The audit report, released April 2021 in case 17-C-0757, said the company failed to adequately prepare for a 2017 workers’ strike (see 2104150041). Charter filed an implementation plan June 1, 2021, but PSC staff identified issues and worked with the company on a revised plan, an agency spokesperson said. Charter filed a revised plan June 9 this year. Commissioners approved the revised plan Thursday with modifications to address remaining staff concerns and to “more clearly define deliverables in the plan,” the PSC spokesperson said.
A state court rejected a Texas Public Utility Commission appeal of a trial court’s temporary injunction against the PUC for not fully funding Texas USF (TUSF). The 3rd Texas District Court of Appeals in Austin ruled Wednesday in favor of appellee AMA TechTel, a CLEC, for similar reasons that the court gave in a June 30 decision supporting Texas Telephone Association (TTA) and other RLECs in a similar case (see 2207010045). Earlier in the AMA case, the state appeals court required the PUC to pay the CLEC the full amount of state USF support it was owed since Dec. 1. "While the present case appears before us in a different procedural posture from that in TTA, the application of legal principles to the pleaded and undisputed facts is substantively the same and our analysis and holdings are largely dictated by that opinion,” Justice Thomas Baker wrote Wednesday. As in the June 30 opinion, state law and PUC regulations preclude the state commission from underfunding TUSF, said Baker: The PUC must pay monthly support amounts. Like the RLEC group, AMA sufficiently pleaded a Texas Administrative Procedure Act claim, he said. The court overruled the PUC's contention that AMA failed to exhaust administrative remedies before bringing the APA challenge. AMA sufficiently pleaded a viable regulatory takings claim and the trial court didn't abuse its discretion when it granted temporary injunctive relief to AMA, he said. "It was the PUC Parties’ decision to amend the Solix contract and refuse to fund the TUSF that altered the parties’ relationship,” so “the status quo is the relationship of the parties prior to the PUC Parties’ challenged actions,” wrote Baker. “We reject the premise implicit in the PUC Parties’ contention that a party may act unlawfully and then claim that the impacts of that unlawful behavior cannot be remedied or mitigated pending a trial on the merits.” Justices Melissa Goodwin and Gisela Triana, the judge who wrote the TTA decision, joined Baker in Wednesday’s opinion. Following the earlier court actions, Texas commissioners Aug. 1 raised the revenue-based TUSF surcharge to 24% from 3.3% (see 2207140060). The Texas PUC and AMA didn’t comment.
Alaska’s U.S. senators sounded the alarm over federal maps that will be used for determining funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. The Republicans’ remarks Tuesday at a livestreamed Alaska Broadband Summit followed state officials raising concerns about holes in the FCC’s broadband serviceable location fabric to be used in upcoming maps (see 2208080056). State, local, tribal and federal officials stressed the need for engagement and collaboration to ensure funding goes where it’s needed.