The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati consolidated the municipal broadband cases of Tennessee v. FCC and North Carolina v. FCC in case No. 15-3291/15-3555 (see 1508030050).

Verizon customers in East Texas experienced a service disruption after an "equipment issue" occurred Monday afternoon, a Verizon spokeswoman said. A damaged or cut fiber optic cable caused the outage, she said, and Verizon is still investigating how that damage occurred. The telco restored service to all affected customers just after 8 p.m. Monday, she said. The company did not provide numbers on how many subscribers were affected.

Pennsylvania Working Families began a campaign to bring Verizon FiOS to underserved areas, a news release from the organization said. The campaign's main target area is the Lehigh Valley, where the organization, along with the Communications Workers of America, held a town hall meeting Tuesday afternoon. The groups also released a radio ad and launched a website on Monday urging Verizon to bring FiOS to those underserved areas in and around the Lehigh Valley, the group said. Pennsylvania Working Families, CWA, local elected officials and citizens from the Lehigh Valley are calling on the Public Utility Commission to investigate the safety, adequacy and reliability of Verizon service in the state, the release said. The groups also held a door-to-door canvass over the weekend in Bethlehem to talk to citizens about the FiOS campaign, it said. Pennsylvania Working Families is tied closely with the CWA, which, along with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, has seen contracts expire in recent weeks (see 1508030061). A Verizon spokesman called the campaign nothing more than an attempt by union leaders to "distract attention from the real issues that need to be resolved at the bargaining table, namely healthcare costs, pensions and workplace flexibility."

The Public Service Commission of West Virginia and Verizon used Tuesday's 8/11 date to remind people to call 811 before they start any project that requires digging. Whether installing a mailbox, building a deck, planting a tree or laying a patio, residents need to call West Virginia 811 before they begin, said a news release from the PSC. By calling the free nationwide number -- 811 -- anyone who is planning on digging can help prevent the unintentional strike of underground utility lines, Verizon said in its news release. The depth of utility lines varies and lines can move when the ground freezes and thaws or an area receives a large amount of rain, the PSC release said. The risk of hitting an underground utility exists, even when digging only a few inches. Striking a pipeline, wire or cable can cause personal injury or death and may result in costly repairs, fines or inconvenient outages, it said.

The right training for dealing with disasters helps individuals, communities, economies and others better absorb the shock of an emergency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a Monday post on FirstNet's blog. That kind of preparedness translates to shorter recovery times and increased resilience, which applies to everything from human health to international emergency response to coastal disasters, NOAA said. Its Office of Response and Restoration recognizes the importance of training and education for preparing local responders to respond effectively to coastal disasters, the agency said.

Alaska Communications is partnering with Akeela to improve access to healthcare connectivity and the Internet, said a news release from Alaska Communications. Akeela is a behavioral healthcare provider in Anchorage and other communities throughout Alaska. Akeela will now be able to provide care remotely to patients thousands of miles away using its private, secure network to connect clinicians with patients via video conferencing and other telehealth tools, the release said. Akeela’s rural programs, which provide the opportunity for access to behavioral health practitioners through telemedicine, will benefit in particular, it said. Residents can receive care without leaving town, which is critical in emergency situations, the release said.

Iowa Wireless Services (IWS) will still have to pay breach of contract damages to telecom billing software provider Transverse, but potentially far less than the $11.7 million initially awarded by a Western Texas U.S. District Court, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June. A revised opinion was filed in the docket Wednesday. After 5th Circuit Judges Jennifer Elrod and Eugene Davis ruled IWS breached a service contract and nondisclosure agreement, the court denied the petitions for rehearing from both parties Wednesday. Transverse had been tasked to build out a billing system for IWS, but after delays in the development process IWS began to seek another provider and breached the existing supply contract in the process, the appeals court opinion said. The district court had originally found IWS didn't breach a nondisclosure agreement with Transverse after giving a competing contractor documents and draft agreements from meetings with Transverse -- a decision reversed by the 5th Circuit. The appeals court also said the district court had allotted more money in damages for the supply contract breach to Transverse than it would have made before the contract termination, and remanded the issue back to the district court to determine the restructured amount. IWS and Transverse had no comment by Friday.

The Communications Workers of America said AT&T Southeast should get serious about bargaining a fair contract before the current one was to have expired Saturday night, said a CWA news release Friday. CWA represents 28,000 workers at AT&T Southeast in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Last week, CWA members at AT&T Southeast authorized union leaders to call a strike if a contract couldn't be agreed, the release said. The CWA bargaining team said AT&T Southeast management continued to demand concessions in job security, healthcare, and working conditions, including a demand for excessive forced overtime, the union said. The telco didn't comment Friday. A separate contract covering workers at YP Holdings also was to have expired Saturday evening. Verizon separately passed a contract deadline with the CWA, which also is criticizing that company (see 1508070029).

The Communications Workers of America announced a series of eight radio ads slamming Verizon’s failure to build out universal FiOS broadband across the East Coast, said a news release from CWA. The 30-second ads began running Friday across Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Verizon allowed its labor contract to expire Aug. 1, leaving 39,000 CWA and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers-represented telecom workers from Massachusetts to Virginia without a labor agreement (see 1507310059), the release said. “Verizon continues to play games with its workers and its customers," said Bob Master, legislative and political director for CWA District One. "Despite our best efforts, the company refuses to engage in a serious negotiation towards a fair contract for its workers. At the same time, its customers continue to suffer because of decaying infrastructure and poor service quality. ... It’s time for them to come to the bargaining table and negotiate.” A Verizon spokesman said the company is disappointed that CWA chose to run the ads, calling the radio spots inaccurate and dishonest. "Verizon’s ongoing investments -- more than $20 billion to deploy FiOS; expanded deployment -- from our initial goal of passing 18 million homes to our current total of more than 20 million homes passed; and consistently providing highly competitive upper middle class salaries and benefits to our unionized workforce, speak volumes compared to union leaders’ stale and empty rhetoric.“

Six Pennsylvania counties filed writs of summons against dozens of carriers to attempt to collect 911 surcharge fees that officials believe went unpaid, said communications lawyer Joshua Wolson at Dilworth Paxson, representing the municipalities. The six counties are Berks, Chester, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster and Washington, and Wolson said he also expects to be filing in York County in the near future. The counties have not finalized an amount that they believe they are owed, but Wolson said it's safe to say it's millions of dollars per county.Delaware County filed a lawsuit alleging the same thing in June (see 1506040042). Among the roughly 30 companies named in the writs are AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast Phone of Pennsylvania, Conestoga Telephone and Telegraph Co., Core Communications, Global Crossing Local Services, Level 3, Verizon Pennsylvania and Windstream Pennsylvania.