The California Public Utilities Commission said it complied with a court order to immediately retrieve Form 477 and other data in the possession of third parties and to instruct all commission employees not to violate the preliminary injunction of U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Judge Vince Chhabria rebuked the CPUC last week for violating the temporary ban on disclosing the data, which includes information about phone and broadband deployment that AT&T, Comcast, CTIA, Verizon and other industry plaintiffs say is confidential (see 1608050015). CPUC retrieved the contested data Monday from Lee Selwyn, president of Economics and Technology Inc., it said in a status report (in Pacer) filed Monday.

FairPoint Communications need report service quality only in locations with no voice competition, the phone company told the Vermont Public Service Board. In testimony Thursday in docket 8701, FairPoint Vermont State President Beth Fastiggi said competition increased significantly since service-quality rules were set. "In the context of adoption of the metrics, service quality regulation was a proxy for competition, giving the [ILEC] an incentive to provide quality service to its customers in the absence of customer choice,” she said. “Those days are long past us now." FairPoint "has -- like all ILECs nationwide -- seen its telephone lines in service decrease dramatically as a result of changing technology and competition, including cable voice service, other broadband provided [VoIP] service, and wireless voice service,” she said. Over the past seven years in Vermont, FairPoint access lines fell 53 percent to about 136,100, she said. Meanwhile, the cost of providing rural voice service is much higher than revenue received for the service, she said. Fastiggi proposed the board annually review competition at specific locations, using buildings by E-911 address within 300 feet of any plant capable of providing wireline voice service, including cable and fiber. Fastiggi also urged the board to double the amount of time given to FairPoint to address service issues. The current metric requires the telco to make repairs in 24 hours, a goal that the carrier hasn’t met for two of the past four quarters. The 24-hour metric "is not a meaningful or realistic measure of customer satisfaction, and yet for many years both FairPoint and its predecessor [Verizon] have struggled to meet it with any consistency," Fastiggi said. "With respect to reported troubles, customers, in our experience, want us there when we say we will be there -- they want us to schedule appointments with them within a reasonable time period and then keep our appointments." FairPoint bases appointment times on its current load, prioritizing homeland security issues, customers with medical needs and wholesale customers, she said. She proposed changing the measure to “Cleared in 48” hours, as used in Maine. That metric “would keep an express, objective period of time in place while at least providing the company with some additional flexibility in scheduling repairs," she said, "and a more meaningful opportunity to meet the regulatory commitment consistently while also completing all other work.”

A judge rebuked the California Public Utilities Commission for violating a preliminary injunction banning disclosure of FCC Form 477 and other data to third parties (see 1607200016). The form includes information about phone and broadband deployment that AT&T, Comcast, CTIA, Verizon and other industry plaintiffs say is confidential. In an order (in Pacer), U.S. District Court in San Francisco agreed with ISPs that CPUC’s Office of Ratepayer Advocates violated the injunction when it disclosed the data to Lee Selwyn, president of Economics and Technology Inc. "It's difficult to understand how anyone at the CPUC could have failed to realize it was inappropriate for Dr. Selwyn, who is not a direct employee, to retain the data after the injunction was issued,” U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria wrote. “It's even more difficult to understand why the CPUC's lawyers, upon learning that Dr. Selwyn continued to possess the data, did not immediately take steps to correct the problem. In the event of similar conduct going forward, the Court will consider holding the responsible parties in contempt, and will entertain any appropriate motion for sanctions." Chhabria directed the CPUC to immediately retrieve any of the data in the possession of Selwyn or any other person or entity not a direct employee of CPUC, and to instruct all commission employees not to violate the injunction. The case now moves on to the larger question of whether CPUC should be permanently banned from disclosing the data to third parties. NARUC recently joined the case, arguing such a ban could disrupt the authority of state commissions across the country and a decision favoring the ISPs would likely be appealed (see 1607290037). The CPUC didn’t comment Friday.

Comcast urged a federal district court to hit the brakes in a 911 fee remittance case until the Georgia Court of Appeals decides whether to hear related cases involving AT&T and EarthLink. Comcast wants the U.S. District Court in Atlanta to dismiss a complaint by Cobb and Gwinnett counties alleging the cable company failed to bill, collect, report and remit the appropriate amount of 911 charges from customers. Last month, the counties told the district court about July 14 Gwinnett County Superior Court rulings rejecting AT&T and EarthLink motions to dismiss in two similar lawsuits by the counties (see 1607200021). The counties said the district court should make the same ruling on Comcast’s motion. But in a Wednesday response (in Pacer), Comcast said the federal court should wait to see if the Georgia Court of Appeals hears a joint appeal sought by AT&T and EarthLink. The Georgia court must decide whether to hear the case by Sept. 8. “The Joint Application raises three questions of Georgia law that are outcome determinative of Defendants’ motions: first, whether a right of action can be implied in the Georgia 911 Act, a statute which contains no express right of action in favor of counties like the plaintiffs here; second, whether a county can circumvent the unavailability of a private right of action by asserting common-law claims; and third, whether the 911 charge is a tax, not a fee,” Comcast said. “If the Georgia Court of Appeals declines to hear the appeal, the parties will be in the same position as they are now, with neither side benefited or prejudiced by the delay.”

The Nebraska Public Service Commission could face a lawsuit if it revamps state USF contribution methodology before the FCC overhauls federal USF contribution formula, CTIA warned in comments Wednesday in PSC docket NUSF-100. The state commission is mulling a move to a connections-based mechanism from the current system based on intrastate revenue. Echoing a call from last month (see 1607190033), CTIA urged the state commission to wait for the FCC: "In addition to avoiding needless legal and practical problems, this approach also will allow the [PSC] to better guard against exacerbating the already high tax, fee, and surcharge burden on Nebraska wireless consumers." Carriers shouldn’t have to make major changes to their billing and accounting systems twice, once for Nebraska contribution overhaul and again after the FCC makes its own changes, CTIA said. “Such a costly and wasteful move could result in litigation.” AT&T is litigating with the Kansas Corporation Commission on these grounds, CTIA said. Federal law says state USF mechanisms mustn't be inconsistent with federal USF's, it said. Wireless contributors allocate intrastate revenue from connections that carry both interstate and intrastate traffic based on the inverse of the factor used for federal USF contributions, based either on a traffic study or the wireless safe harbor, it said. "If Nebraska uses a different approach to assessing interstate-intrastate connections, there is a significant risk that the Nebraska approach could impose NUSF contributions on revenue that is treated as interstate by the FCC.” CenturyLink disagreed. Its comments said "there are no unsurmountable intrastate versus interstate jurisdictional issues raised by moving to a connections-based mechanism for assessing an NUSF surcharge.” Workshops are needed to work out details, but "a connections-based methodology is fundamentally legally sound," the telco said. "An NUSF contribution which is connections-based does not burden the interstate uses any more than a surcharge which is revenues based, since both are determined without regard to jurisdictional separations" and "both recover the same total amount for the fund." Rural independent telcos said the PSC can’t afford to wait for the FCC. The FCC will revamp contribution "at some future point in time, but waiting for the FCC to act at a time when the current NUSF contribution methodology may not be sustainable is not a viable alternative,” rural independents commented. Nebraska is one of several states with decreased revenue to the state USF from contributions (see 1607010010).

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) unveiled $54.2 million in state broadband grants and issued a request for proposals for the second round of the New NY Broadband Program, his office said in a Wednesday news release. The second round will target the most remote areas of the state, and includes a portion of the areas where Verizon declined Connect America Fund money from the FCC, the governor’s office said. Also, Cuomo announced round-one awards, expected to connect 34,000 new homes with high-speed broadband. Together with a Charter Communications/Time Warner Cable transaction commitment to connect 145,000 unserved households in upstate New York over four years (see 1606150056), the actions are expected to connect 97 percent of New Yorkers, Cuomo’s office said. Also, Charter plans to make 100 Mbps speeds available to more than 2 million upstate New York homes and businesses by early 2017, two years earlier than required by the New York Public Service Commission, it said. The New York state grants in round one are expected to drive $75.8 million in total investment in broadband deployment projects, including $54.2 million to be funded by the state and $21.6 million to come from the private sector, the governor’s office said. More than 80 percent of the funding went to projects in unserved areas upstate, it said. The grants will fund nearly 18,000 miles of broadband infrastructure, with 24 awarded projects providing fiber to the home and cable DOCSIS technologies, it said. The biggest awards went to TDS Telecom ($9.4 million), State Telephone ($8.7 million) and Middleburgh Telephone ($5.6 million). The state said it plans a third phase of its broadband program commencing early 2017. “These actions are a major step forward in creating the most robust broadband infrastructure network in the nation, and ensuring that reliable, high-speed internet is available to all New Yorkers,” said Cuomo.

The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is seeking comment on a petition to clarify infrastructure access rules to promote municipality use of utility poles and underground conduits for fiber, PURA said in a notice Tuesday. By statute, Connecticut reserves a “municipal gain” space on each pole allowing municipal use for any purpose. The Connecticut Consumer Counsel filed a petition June 21 at PURA asking the agency to clarify rules and remove barriers to pole access, attachments, maintenance and make-ready costs so localities can use the municipal gain space for fiber. Clearer rules will spur private investment in high-speed broadband, the counsel said. Comments are due Aug. 31, PURA said.

Cutting carriers out of the eligibility process helps the California Public Utilities Commission avoid waste, fraud and abuse in the California LifeLine program, CPUC President Michael Picker said in a letter July 27 to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. The CPUC responded to Pai’s July 5 letter asking for four states' help fighting such problems in the Lifeline USF low-income telecom support program (see 1607060047). Pai wrote to state telecom regulators in in California, Oregon, Texas and Vermont, each of which runs its own Lifeline accountability databases. Unlike other states, California has empowered an independent, third-party administrator to determine eligibility, Picker said. “One of the fundamental differences between how the CPUC administers the California LifeLine Program and how states in which service providers determine eligibility for the federal Lifeline program [administer theirs] is that that carriers cannot override the safeguards California has put in place.” The California administrator “reviews each piece of underlying document to determine eligibility,” and the state program “neither acquires nor relies on certifications by service providers as a part of the enrollment process,” he said. At the 2016 NARUC summer meeting last week, CPUC Commissioner Catherine Sandoval said California may want to opt out of national verification, as established in the FCC recent Lifeline order, because the state already has a strong third-party verifier (see 1607270020).

The California Senate Appropriations Committee delayed a decision on a dig-once broadband conduit bill. At a Monday hearing, the committee moved AB-1549 into its “suspense file,” a category reserved for bills deemed to be costly, for a vote expected later in the month. The bill, which already passed the Assembly, would require the state’s Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to notify broadband companies about highway construction projects so they can install broadband conduit as part of each project. If no broadband company wants to help, the department would be required to install fiber broadband conduit itself. Sponsor Assemblymember Jim Wood (D) said Caltrans failed to follow a 2006 executive order by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). Caltrans notifies large providers but not smaller broadband consortiums, Wood said. “It’s been 10 years since that executive order and nothing has really happened and most of my district does not have access to high speed Internet.” A state finance department official opposed the bill at the hearing.

The District of Columbia Public Service Commission cleared two CLEC acquisitions in orders Thursday. In one order, the D.C. PSC granted an application to transfer Primus customers to Birch Communications and to allow Primus, which filed for bankruptcy, to abandon service. The FCC OK’d the deal in April (see 1604120032). In another order, the PSC cleared U.S. TelePacific’s buy of DSCI, which is pending at the FCC (see 1604060033).