The FCC invited applicants for distributing deaf-blind equipment in Florida and Washington under its National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program (see 1605100041). Applications are due June 10, said a Thursday notice. It said the certified distributors of deaf-blind equipment for those two states recently withdrew.

California appropriators approved a measure to dissolve the state’s telecom regulator but held a controversial IP transition bill at a hearing Friday. The California State Assembly Appropriations Committee stamped “Do pass” on ACA-11, which erases the text that established the California Public Utilities Commission and requires the legislature to restructure the body or reassign many of its duties to other agencies (see 1605260046). The CPUC hasn’t taken a position on the constitutional amendment, which requires two-thirds approval by both houses of the Legislature, then a ballot vote by Californians in November. Meanwhile, the committee decided to hold in committee AB-2395, which would authorize telcos to discontinue legacy telephone service in 2020 (see 1605180075). That makes it unlikely to get a floor vote by the end of this legislative session. AT&T supported the bill but consumer groups and workers, including The Utility Reform Network and Communications Workers of America, opposed it. “We’re incredibly disappointed in the decision to hold AB-2395, said Ben Golombek, chief of staff to Assembly member Evan Low, the Democratic sponsor of the bill. "The loser with this outcome is the consumers of California who will be stuck with a more expensive, more unreliable and more environmentally wasteful network for years to come."

The Ohio Public Utilities Commission swore in Asim Haque as chairman Wednesday, the PUC said in a news release. Gov. John Kasich (R) appointed him in May; Haque will have a five-year term ending April 10, 2021. He has been an Ohio commissioner since 2013 and previously was an attorney handling energy, utilities and auto manufacturing issues.

The New York State Senate passed a bill to impose criminal penalties for bots used to scoop up tickets from websites and resell them at a premium. Because of bots, events sell out quickly even though tickets haven't been bought by real people. Ticket bots are already illegal software under New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law. S-6931 strengthens penalties. It also requires StubHub and other ticket resale platforms to clearly disclose ticket face value alongside the resale price. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman proposed the measure (see 1604280040) and celebrated Senate passage in a statement Tuesday: “Ordinary New Yorkers deserve a fair shot to see their favorite performers and teams, and protection from those that use illegal software to rig the system. ... I call on the Assembly to pass similar consumer protections.” S-6931 moves next to the New York State Assembly. Earlier this month, members of Congress introduced a bipartisan House bill that would tackle the ticket bots issue at a national level (see 1604290055).

New Jersey gave a green light to Altice’s $17.7 billion takeover of Cablevision. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities OK’ed a settlement among the BPU, the parties and the New Jersey Division of the Rate Counsel that includes conditions for maintaining customer service, establishing a low-income broadband service, upgrading the network and protecting jobs in the state. The conditions are similar to what was proposed last week in New York state (see 1605200070), which is the last remaining regulatory OK required by Altice and Cablevision. PBU President Richard Mroz said he's confident the settlement will benefit Cablevision customers and employees, as well as seniors and families with children. Under the conditions, Altice will be prohibited from cutting customer-facing jobs for two years. It will upgrade network speeds to 300 Mbps by no later than year-end 2017. Within 15 months of the deal closing, it will provide 30 Mbps broadband to low-income households with no data cap, modem fee or self-installation charge for $14.99 monthly. It will double the download speed of Cablevision’s $24.95 low-cost plan to 10 Mbps within 120 days of closing and continue to sell the service for two years. Also, the ISP must offer a broadband product without a data cap for three years. In a declared emergency like Superstorm Sandy, Altice must provide free Wi-Fi and access to hyper-local news and weather to all New Jersey residents. It must partner with utilities to speed power restoration, provide backup customer support, and have network redundancy and backup powering ready to go. And it must write a storm readiness communications plan, including public service announcements. Altice agreed to “abide by and honor any final orders with respect to any pending appeal or declaratory judgement, whether issued by the FCC or by a court of competent jurisdiction,” a condition said. The settlement includes a “most favored nation” clause ensuring that New Jersey doesn’t get a worse deal than any other state that approved the transfer of control. Cablevision has 783,058 customers in New Jersey. “Altice is pleased with the approval order by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for the acquisition of Cablevision, which recognizes the benefits that the proposed merger will bring to consumers in New Jersey,” an Altice spokeswoman said. “The transaction is expected to close on track in the second quarter.”

A federal court hinted it may side with ISPs in a case about whether a state commission can compel disclosure of subscriber data to a third party. In a Friday order (in Pacer), the U.S. District Court in San Francisco temporarily banned the California Public Utilities Commission from enforcing a May 3 ruling compelling top ISPs to disclose subscription data to The Utilities Reform Network (TURN) as part of a state investigation of market competition (see 1605130025). The data involves carrier market share and includes Form 477 data that carriers report to the FCC. In their complaint (in Pacer), AT&T, Comcast, CTIA, Verizon and other industry plaintiffs said the data is confidential. Friday, the court granted the telecom companies a preliminary injunction. Judge Vince Chhabria said the ISPs don’t have to provide the data “until cross-motions for summary judgment are adjudicated,” and set a hearing on the cross-motions for Aug. 4 at 10 a.m., with a ruling to follow shortly thereafter. “The plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success,” Chhabria wrote. “Although the FCC materials cited by the plaintiffs are not crystal clear on whether federal law allows a state commission to disclose this kind of data to a third party pursuant to a protective order, those materials suggest the answer is ‘no.’” The judge sympathized with the CPUC’s desire for the data. “Nobody disputes that the state commissions themselves need this kind of data,” he said. “The issue presented by this preliminary injunction motion is whether the state commissions may require the data to be disclosed to third parties.” The CPUC didn’t comment Tuesday.

Wireline broadband covers 95 percent of California households, said a California Public Utilities Commission report released Tuesday. And 90 percent of all households are served by broadband with speeds of at least 6 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream, said the CPUC. About 340,000 households (3 percent) are unserved in the state, which means they have either no provider or have service slower than 768 kbps downstream and 200 kbps upstream, it said. Most unserved households are concentrated in the north coast, mountains, Central Valley or desert regions, it said.

Frontier Communications should disclose complete Connecticut network modernization plans to the state’s Office of Consumer Counsel, the OCC head told the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. OCC has access to that information under the 2014 PURA order approving Frontier’s acquisition of AT&T wireline customers, said Consumer Counsel Elin Swanson Katz in PURA oral argument on the access live-streamed Tuesday. The information will assist PURA in an investigation of whether Frontier is meeting transaction commitments on network upgrades. But Frontier has objected to sharing confidential parts of its business strategy with OCC because of the office’s role in municipal broadband procurement processes. A division called the Office of State Broadband (OSB) advises municipalities on broadband procurement, and if it knew Frontier's confidential business strategy -- but not that of other companies submitting proposals to municipalities -- it could advantage the other companies, testified Frontier outside counsel Daniel Venora. “It would be like giving our information to Cablevision or Comcast.” Frontier supports a May 12 ruling by PURA to restrict access to the confidential Frontier material only to OCC staffers who don't perform any OSB duties, he said. But the OCC believes the plan isn't practical, said Katz. The OCC has 12 staff members, and soon will have only 10 due to two planned retirements, she said. “Because of the size of our office, everyone works on everything,” including OSB matters, she said. “To wall off staff isn’t possible even if I were amenable to it.” Legally, the OCC head can’t delegate her authority to selected staff members and remove herself from the process, added OCC principal attorney Joseph Rosenthal. Katz said she felt personally offended by Frontier. “A new duty should not be interpreted to limit our rights,” said Katz. “This is nothing less than a personal attack on my integrity," she said: "This is saying I can't be trusted to handle confidential information, which is frankly offensive and unwarranted given OCC’s unblemished record in handling confidential information,” including major infrastructure plans and energy procurements. It “absolutely, 100 percent, is not” a personal attack on the OCC, said Venora. Since closing the AT&T deal in 2014, Frontier had major problems migrating customers from AT&T, an experience that Frontier CEO Daniel McCarthy described Monday as far worse than the transition issues in California, Florida and Texas (see 1605230046).

Verizon fought a Communications Workers of America challenge to an extension granted by the New York Public Service Commission in the state’s probe of copper service quality. The PSC secretary last week granted Verizon’s request to extend its deadline for filing testimony until 45 days after the end of the East Coast strike (see 1605120048). But CWA said the PSC acted too quickly to grant the request for more time (see 1605180042). The PSC didn’t take more time because the telco’s request was reasonable, Verizon said in a filing Monday. Meanwhile, Verizon and the CWA continued federal mediation to resolve the six-week-old East Coast strike, which analysts say has dented the company's wireline revenue (see 1605200060).

New York state officials pressed the FCC to keep Connect America Fund auction support in New York and other states where price-cap ILECs declined commission offers of Phase II broadband-oriented support. Reallocating the declined support to other states "would not ensure the deployment of broadband services in those New York communities the FCC previously had identified as unserved or underserved by broadband," said representatives of Empire State Development and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a filing in docket 10-90 about a call with an aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel before lobbying restrictions took effect a week ahead of Wednesday's planned CAF II auction vote. In other recent auction filings: the Massachusetts Broadband Institute asked the FCC to consider favoring bids that leverage other state investments and build off of successful projects under the federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP); Commissioner Karen Charles Peterson of the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable also urged the FCC to give special consideration to eligible recipients of BTOP funding and other state-funded broadband projects; and ViaSat opposed "self-serving" proposals from electric utility interests under which the FCC would "abandon the use of market-based mechanisms that would efficiently allocate limited [CAF] support to the most cost-effective service providers in favor of a complex 'points' scheme that would favor comparably inefficient fiber-based providers, delay the initial selection of winning bidders and invite numerous post-selection challenges, dramatically increase funding requirements, and consequently give rise to a 'funding gap' that would leave hundreds of thousands of households without access to critical broadband services."