The first discounted wireless plan for California’s LifeLine program was approved Tuesday by the California Public Utilities Commission. The CPUC selected Telscape Communications as the first authorized wireless provider for the state-funded LifeLine project, said a news release (http://bit.ly/1nhvOP9). Discounted wireless plans have been offered in the state under the federal Lifeline program. Telscape will offer three discounted plans, ranging from 1,000 voice minutes and 200 text messages for free to unlimited voice, text and data for $33.10 a month. LifeLine subsidies will allow Telscape to waive activation fees. The CPUC said it expects other wireless providers to be authorized in the future.

The Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communication System Authority awarded a $175 million contract to Motorola Solutions to develop a wireless public safety broadband network based on 4G LTE. The LA-RICS network will provide data communications to more than 34,000 law enforcement, fire service and health service workers and more than 80 public safety agencies, said the company in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1gfdj4D). The contract follows June’s agreement where FirstNet allowed LA-RICS to lease access to FirstNet’s spectrum (CD June 20 p3). If all options are exercised, the contract calls for a five-phase project to design, construct, implement and maintain the LTE network. LA-RICS is funding the 231-site project primarily with federal grants from NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.

The FCC should use required call completion reports as the basis for enforcement action, the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUCO) said in a filing (http://bit.ly/NV2Ynx) posted online Wednesday. The Nebraska Public Service Commission in its own filing (http://bit.ly/1q7NmMm), also posted Wednesday, agreed. Both opposed a petition (http://bit.ly/1cvh2jf) by Sprint to reconsider using the completion reports in enforcement actions aimed at improving rural call completion. The PUCO said “call completion reports, by themselves, are not the basis for subsequent enforcement action. The reports contain specific measurements that allow the FCC to observe general call completion activity. If one or more reports contain measurement results that vary significantly from the results of all other reports, the FCC can review the underlying data and open an investigation if warranted. Reviews and investigations are not enforcement actions."

Seattle may be seen as a center for high-technology, but don’t expect Google Fiber to come there anytime soon because of its regulatory environment and penchant for public process, said the city’s former chief technology officer, Bill Schrier. Kansas City, Mo.’s City Council approved a contract with Google the day after the city was disclosed as Google Fiber’s launch city, he wrote in an opinion piece Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1fXQLJg) on the Seattle website Crosscut. Seattle would “need to have endless community meetings and hearings and public floggings of Google Executives” before Google Fiber could come, wrote Schrier. “Every citizen in a tinfoil hat who thinks fiber is just another cereal ingredient would have their three minutes in front of the Council.” Also discouraging Google Fiber is a requirement that companies pay for replacing light poles if necessary to serve the project, and a rule that restricts the size of cabinets on city rights-of-way that house fiber, wrote the ex-CTO. Google said last month it may expand its high-speed broadband product to as many as 34 cities beyond where it is now (CD Feb 20 p14).

NTIA hosted the first of two workshops last week to get input from states and territories about the start of FirstNet’s network. Representatives from Eastern states met with FirstNet officials at an Atlanta workshop about state consultation and planning for the network, said an NTIA news release Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1n2EYLA). A second workshop is scheduled for March 11-12 in Phoenix for Western states. The workshops also let states discuss how planning is going, learn from each other about stakeholder outreach and governance structures, and develop regional connections and collaboration, said NTIA.

A New York appellate court denied Sprint’s request to throw out state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s $400 million lawsuit against the company for allegedly undercollecting and underpaying state and local sales taxes. Brought under the New York False Claims Act, Schneiderman’s suit would require Sprint to pay three times its approximately $130 million underpayment, said the AG’s office in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1hCjeF2). Sprint had sought a dismissal of the suit, saying the AG hadn’t adequately shown that the carrier knowingly violated the tax law and that the company could not be held liable for conduct before the 2010 passage of the False Claims Act. Thursday’s decision by a five-judge panel in a New York appellate court upheld state Supreme Court Justice Peter Sherwood’s July decision to deny Sprint’s petition.

Texas Lifeline participants deemed eligible through another household member are being contacted to get their Social Security number and date of birth, said the state’s Public Utility Commission in an FCC ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1kORc9b). The PUC and its contractor, Solix, discovered the data were not being completed during a review of the state’s Lifeline process, PUC Lifeline Program Administrator Jay Stone told an FCC official Feb. 21. The program will begin asking self-enrolled Lifeline participants to renew their enrollment status every seven months, he said, according to the filing posted Friday in docket 11-42. It said certification forms are now only filled out when self-enrollees are initially approved for Lifeline.

A Minnesota state senator will propose a measure that would create a $100 million competitive grant fund designed to extend broadband into underserved areas of the state. Sen. Matt Schmit, Democrat/Farm Labor Party, who plans to formally introduce the bill in coming days, said in an interview Thursday that the matching program could generate an additional $200 billion in broadband investments. Executive Director Dan Dorman of the Greater Minnesota Partnership, a coalition of businesses, nonprofits and cities that advocate for economic development policies, said the state had set the ambitious goal of being among the top five states nationally in broadband access by 2015. However, a Jan. 27 Minnesota Broadband Task Force report (http://bit.ly/1fujYwJ) found the state is falling short of meeting the target and faces a wide gulf in broadband access between urban and rural areas. Dorman, whose organization is supporting the fund, noted the state is expected to have a $1 billion budget surplus in the coming two-year budget cycle.

FairPoint Communications met its goal to increase broadband access to 95 percent of its access lines in New Hampshire, said the telco in a Thursday news release. It sai, the company has invested over $700 million since April 2008 in its communications infrastructure and technology to reach new customers, upgrade its network and expand broadband in northern New England (http://tinyurl.com/k7hbwc9. The goal had been to meet the 95 percent threshold by year’s end.

Broadband services should be required to begin contributing to the USF, a NARUC official told the FCC. Vermont Commissioner and past NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman John Burke told aides to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that a NARUC resolution (http://bit.ly/1hTQPNr) passed at its winter meetings calls for expanding the USF contribution base (CD Feb 12 p9). The expansion would include “all communications services, including services such as broadband that are required to be offered in order to receive federal support,” wrote Burke in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday to docket 09-191 (http://bit.ly/1lm0U6j). NARUC didn’t take a position on whether the size of the fund should be increased.