The FCC unanimously approved all its agenda items at Thursday's open meeting, including orders on mandatory outage reporting, mitigating orbital debris and misrouted 911 calls. The agency also announced millions of dollars in proposed pirate radio fines and FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel commented on former President Donald Trump's remarks about revoking the “licenses” of CNN and NBC over their coverage of him (see 2401170050). “The First Amendment is something we take seriously and I take seriously,” Rosenworcel said. Commissioner Brendan Carr declined comment on the former president's remarks.

South Dakota could increase a 911 fee on monthly phone bllls to $2, from $1.25. The House Taxation Committee voted 9-4 for HB-1092 on Tuesday. The bill would clarify that revenue from the fee “must” be used for 911.

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is considering attaching an amendment to a pending national security supplemental spending bill that would allocate $3.08 billion to fully fund the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program, communications officials and lobbyists said in interviews. Telecom-focused lawmakers are still eyeing FY 2024 appropriations bills as vehicles for allocating rip-and-replace money, and some are pushing to keep using a spectrum legislative package to pay for it. President Joe Biden asked Congress to authorize the additional rip-and-replace money in October as part of a domestic funding supplemental separate from the national security request (see 2310250075).

Nebraska will expand a Windstream 911 probe to include a January outage and outages occurring while docket 911-076 is open, the Nebraska Public Service Commission decided 5-0 Tuesday. “The Commission is concerned with what appears to be a growing pattern of repeated 911 outages on Windstream’s network affecting southeast Nebraska” public safety answering points, said the PSC order, which noted that three outages occurred during a five-month period. Also, commissioners unanimously supported a precision agriculture order setting a process for states grants (docket C-5529). The PSC will make more than $906,000 available for the 2023-2024 fiscal year starting July 1, with half the money for connectivity and the rest for devices and technology, it said. The PSC will run annual grant cycles with awards on or before June 30 each year, the order said. For the 2024 cycle, applications are due Feb. 23 and awards will be released by April 30, it said. "The grant program is another opportunity to advance precision agriculture in our state with much-needed connectivity and supporting technology,” said Nebraska PSC Chair Dan Watermeier. “We look forward to seeing the innovative projects submitted through the application process.” Also, the commission voted 5-0 for a TRS order to open docket C-5555 and hold a hearing March 19 at 1:30 p.m. CDT to determine the surcharge for the fiscal year starting July 1. Windstream experienced a 52-minute evening outage Jan. 13 in southeast Nebraska due to "two unrelated but overlapping network events," a spokesperson wrote in an email. "First, there was a fiber cut between Lincoln and Denver that took down one of our two network paths into and out of Nebraska." That damage didn't cause an outage, but before the telco could repair it, an unrelated event between Lincoln and Chicago "took down our second network path into and out of the state," the spokesperson said. "Service [was] restored when the fiber cut on the Lincoln-Denver path was repaired."

A draft order on making the FCC's disaster information reporting system mandatory for cable, wireline, wireless and VoIP providers hasn’t seen many changes since circulation and is expected to be approved at a commissioners' open meeting Thursday, agency and industry officials told us (see 2401040064). The item, in docket 21-346, also includes a Further NPRM that would seek comment on extending mandatory DIRS reports to broadcasters, satellite providers and broadband internet access service providers.

The Wisconsin Assembly voted 96-1 to approve a next-generation 911 bill Thursday. AB-356 would provide grants that support NG-911 costs. A committee cleared the bill earlier in the week (see 2401170068). The Senate is its next destination.

Kansas Rep. Kyle Hoffman (R) would hesitate to scrap a recurring state 911 audit if the legislature doesn’t pass his forthcoming bill to move the Kansas 911 Coordinating Council to a state agency, he said at a livestreamed House Commerce Committee hearing Thursday. The committee heard testimony on HB-2483, which would eliminate a five-year audit by the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit that checks if public safety answering points are appropriately using 911 funding, whether they have enough money, and the status of 911 service implementation (see 2401030019). An audit could still be requested, but the bill would stop automatically requiring audits that are “somewhat boring for the most part,” said Chair Sean Tarwater (R). Committee member Hoffman responded that auditing is useful to the Kansas 911 Coordinating Council where he serves. However, Hoffman plans to propose a bill next week, probably with a Democratic co-sponsor, "that will be moving the 911 Coordinating Council to a fee-funded state agency, which would then negate the reasoning for the 5-year audit,” he said. "I would be a little bit hesitant to totally get rid of the audit if we don't move it to a state agency because that is one of the only real lookbacks that we have as a legislature to really look at what they're doing.” Kansas Legislative Post Auditor Chris Clarke testified that her division usually receives more requests for audits than it has capacity to perform.

National Emergency Number Association representatives met with staff for FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez on the group’s i3 standard and an ATIS standard for IP multimedia subsystems. “All known” next-generation 911 systems in the U.S. and Canada are “operating under the i3 specification,” said a filing Wednesday in docket 21-479.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission ordered its administrative law judges division to reach a decision by July 2 on the state E-911 Council’s complaint against Frontier Communications. Participants in docket 23-0921-T-C may seek an extension, said Tuesday’s PSC order. The council complained that 10 emergency call centers couldn’t receive 911 calls for nearly 10 hours during a three-day period in November (see 2312070015).

Wisconsin legislators advanced bills prohibiting caller ID spoofing and supporting next-generation 911 (NG-911). The Assembly Consumer Protection Committee voted unanimously to clear anti-spoofing bill AB-559 on Wednesday, one day after the Senate passed the similar SB-531. AB-559 goes next to the Assembly floor. The Assembly Finance Committee voted 12-1 Tuesday to advance AB-356, which would provide grants to support migration to NG-911 (see 2312200055). The bill is on Thursday’s Assembly floor calendar. The similar SB-371 is on the Senate’s calendar the same day.