The successful deployment of open radio access networks will require international cooperation, speakers said Wednesday during NTIA’s first International ORAN Symposium in Golden, Colorado. On day one, conference attendees heard U.S. officials highlight the Biden administration’s commitment to open networks (see 2409170061).
Consumer advocates said the California Public Utilities Commission should move ahead with service quality rule changes that the telecom industry says would be illegal. “The Commission has the authority and supporting precedent to impose meaningful enforcement mechanisms for its customer protection and service quality rules,” The Utility Reform Network (TURN) and Center for Accessible Technology (CforAT) said in reply comments the CPUC received Tuesday. However, telecom industry commenters said a CPUC staff proposal and consumer groups' proposed additions aren’t supported by facts, the law or policy reasons.
FuboTV carriage agreement claims against Fox as part of its broader claims against the Venu sports streaming joint venture (see 2402210007) should be severed and transferred to another court, Fox told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in a motion Tuesday (docket 1:24-cv-01363). The carriage agreement between the two states that carriage agreement claims should proceed before the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Fox said.
“We’re not waiting for federal leadership in privacy,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D) during a Silicon Flatirons event Wednesday. Amid congressional inaction, Colorado was the third state to enact a comprehensive privacy bill, after California and Virginia. The AG office has sought to be transparent as it’s worked on rules for implementing the Colorado Privacy Act, said Weiser, quipping that the FCC is a “poster child [for] how not to do rulemaking.” Colorado plans to watch how state government manages data at the same time as it oversees the private sector, he said. The AG office will take the same approach with AI, he added. Also, as the AG office moves toward enforcement, it is focused on educating businesses. Weiser's “memo” for businesses: “Stop collecting so much data … Stop storing it for so long. Stop giving so many people access to it.” The AG said the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on Chevron deference doesn’t formally affect states. “Informally, it’s possible that some state supreme courts will look at it.” However, Weiser finds the decision “entirely unpersuasive,” he said. “I am confident that [Colorado’s] supreme court will continue to provide agency deference.” The Colorado AG office recently set a Nov. 7 hearing on the latest proposed amendments to the Colorado Privacy Act (see 2409160036).
AT&T negotiated tentative agreements with Communications Workers of America covering two regions, averting a strike in the West and ending a 30-day work stoppage in the Southeast, CWA said Sunday. The Southeast agreement covers 17,000 workers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. A five-year agreement includes across the board wage increases of 19.33%, with additional 3% increases for wire technicians and utility operations, the union said. The four-year agreement for the West region covers 8,500 workers in California and Nevada and includes a compound wage increase of 15.01% and “improvements to overtime and scheduling,” CWA said. The Southeast agreement comes days after both sides returned to the bargaining table, an AT&T spokesperson emailed Monday. “As we’ve said since day 1, our goal has been to reach fair agreements that recognize the hard work our employees do to serve our customers with competitive market-based pay and benefits that are among the best in the nation -- and that’s exactly what was accomplished,” the spokesperson said: The agreements also support AT&T’s competitive position in the broadband industry “where we can grow and win against our mostly non-union competitors.” CWA President Claude Cummings said members and retirees from across the U.S. helped during the strike. “I believe in the power of unity, and the unity our members and retirees have shown during these contract negotiations has been outstanding and gave our bargaining teams the backing they needed to deliver strong contracts,” Cummings said.
ISPs and consumer advocates recommended tweaks as the California Public Utilities Commission began finalizing state rules for NTIA’s broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. The CPUC plans voting Sept. 26 on a proposed decision approving rules implementing volume two of the CPUC’s proposed rules, which it submitted to NTIA in December. Determining the extremely high cost per location threshold (EHCPLT) on a project area unit (PAU) basis as proposed "will lead to inconsistent results,” said AT&T in comments Thursday, recommending a statewide approach instead. “Such piecemeal and fluctuating EHCPLT determinations make project predictability difficult as applicants formulate their submissions and will likely increase the number of PAUs that would be too costly for fiber deployments.” Also, several proposals would "result in rate regulation in violation of the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act," including a proposed middle-class affordable option with a $74 monthly rate cap, AT&T said. The California Broadband & Video Association advised that CPUC maximize BEAD funding’s reach “by prioritizing private matching funds over speculative awards from other grant programs and by ensuring that applicants have the financial capability and sustainability for their proposed projects.” Avoid discouraging participation with "restrictive price caps" or "skewed scoring criteria related to affordability, labor, and network resilience,” the cable association said. But Tarana Wireless asked the CPUC to reconsider scoring criteria that favor big companies. For example, one category "will only award a full 20 points to providers capable of providing at least a 65% private sector match or more of requested funding amount," a requirement that's "unusually high and favors larger and wealthier service providers.” The CPUC’s independent Public Advocates Office urged setting "a hire bar" for allowing a subgrantee to increase the price of a required $30 low-cost option. Center for Accessible Technology, another consumer group, asked why companies may request increasing low-cost plan prices to account for inflation or increased costs, but there’s no way to reduce prices “when a provider’s financial viability can be sustained at the lower level.” The Utility Reform Network said the CPUC should plan for the possibility that the low-cost option and affordability issues may need to be revisited, including due to the end of the affordable connectivity program.
Verizon will use its Simple Mobile brand in the relaunched California LifeLine foster youth pilot program. Each participant gets a smartphone, charger and phone case, plus unlimited talk and text, 25 GB mobile data and 10 GB hot spot data for no cost, Verizon said Friday. The CPUC selected Verizon to replace T-Mobile in May (see 2405160046).
Interconnected VoIP providers are telephone corporations subject to the same laws and rules as other wireline and wireless telcos, the California Public Utilities Commission said in a proposed decision Friday. The CPUC may vote as soon as Oct. 17 on the item that aims to set a regulatory framework for VoIP providers (docket R.22-08-008). Consumer groups dismissed industry concerns that VoIP regulation is federally preempted (see 2307030036). "California’s Constitution specifically extends the Commission’s jurisdiction to companies engaged in ‘the transmission of telephone and telegraph messages,’” said the draft. “This includes services delivered over any technology, including but not limited to, traditional copper lines, coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, and mobile or fixed wireless radios.” Under the proposal, the CPUC would create two utility type designations. Digital voice nomadic (DVN) providers, covering those with only nomadic interconnected VoIP services, would be subject to a registration process similar to the CPUC's existing wireless identification registration, it said. Digital voice fixed (DVF) providers that sell fixed interconnected VoIP would "continue to be subject to operating authority requirements similar to traditional wireline service providers,” the draft said. DVN and DVF providers would be required to post performance bonds, pay the CPUC user fee and file annual operating and affiliate transaction reports, it said. The state commission would require facilities-based interconnected VoIP providers to obtain certificates of public convenience and necessity to operate in California. Non-facilities-based fixed interconnected VoIP service providers would use the Public Utilities Code Section 1013 registration process to get operating authority. The CPUC proposed an automatic migration process for interconnected VoIP providers already registered under the previous informal process under Section 285. Also, the CPUC would remove some existing requirements for wireline telcos to align with the interconnected VoIP rules, the draft said. The agency said improvements to application processes for operating authority would include "standardized fees and performance bond amounts," an expedited 21-day California Environmental Quality Act review process and "presumptive confidential treatment of certain financial and business information."
NextNav received support from the California Fire Chiefs Association for its controversial proposal that would reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band, enabling a terrestrial “complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services (see 2409060046). “We have firsthand experience with degradation of GPS due to the ‘urban canyons’ and dense environment we cover, a problem that is ideally resolved by a terrestrial PNT service of this type proposed,” the group said in a filing posted Friday in docket 24-240. Reply comments are due at the FCC this week.
Fewer than 1% of Californians exercised opt-out rights with the largest data brokers last year, a Consumer Watchdog report released Thursday found. The consumer group said it analyzed opt-out numbers for Experian, Acxiom and LiveRamp. People probably aren’t exercising their rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in higher numbers “because these rights aren’t user friendly, as opting out has to be done website by website, and that takes forever,” said Justin Kloczko, Consumer Watchdog tech and privacy advocate. That could soon change, he said. Under the 2023 Delete Act, Californians will be able to delete all data that a data broker collects in one step starting in 2026, said Kloczko. In addition, if Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signs AB-3048, which passed the legislature last month (see 2408290005), consumers will be able to opt out from the sale of and sharing data on all websites through a required option in web browsers, he said.