Time Warner Cable told the Los Angeles city government Friday that it’s in the best position to help build the city’s potential municipal broadband network. The city had issued a request for information (RFI) on a municipal network that’s gigabit-capable and can serve a mix of residential, business and government customers. Time Warner Cable told Los Angeles that its current network and planned improvements are capable of delivering the requirements included in the RFI. The operator has invested more than $1.5 billion on its network infrastructure in the Los Angeles area over the past four years, which in conjunction with its new Gigasphere technology “positions us to be able to introduce gigabit-per-second speeds in 2016,” said Peter Stern, chief strategy, people and corporate development officer, in a news release. “Leveraging our existing network allows us to deliver these speeds faster and with less disruption than any other provider” (http://bit.ly/1kDKIcd).

Frontier Communications continues to believe there are “numerous public interest benefits” to its proposed buy of AT&T’s wireline assets in Connecticut, Executive Vice President-External Affairs Kathleen Abernathy and Frontier lawyers told Daniel Alvarez, wireline aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in a phone call Monday, Frontier said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 14-22. The deal, announced in December, will allow Frontier to “expand 10 Mbps broadband services to an additional 100,000 Connecticut homes that lack 10 Mbps service today,” Frontier said. The telco said it committed to making “middle-mile” improvements in the network that include construction of a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer ultra-high specification fiber network. The improved network will increase network capacity in the state tenfold, which Frontier said means it can provide 10 gigabit service to customers in the state (http://bit.ly/1ruE2Ck).

AT&T said it’s officially adding Carrboro, North Carolina, as a target city for its GigaPower 1 Gbps fiber to the home network services. Carrboro’s town government reached an agreement to allow AT&T deployment of the services within town limits as part of the North Carolina Next Generation Network’s (NCNGN) initiative. NCNGN’s five other participant cities have also reached agreements with AT&T -- Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh and Winston-Salem, AT&T said (http://soc.att.com/1jCM3Ff).

Two “progressive” state-level policy groups -- the Progressive States Network (PSN) and American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange (ALICE) -- said they're combining to more effectively push state-level legislation. “For nearly a generation, conservatives have outpaced us at the business of movement-building in states,” ALICE and PSN said in a joint statement Wednesday. “They have focused hard on it, poured resources into it, and have been ruthlessly efficient at it. Starting now, we will do the same” (http://bit.ly/WkGj8Y). The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council is considered the main group advocating for conservative policies at the state level, though ALICE and PSN didn’t mention the group. ALICE Executive Director Nick Rathod will lead the combined group once they're joined in the fall, ALICE and PSN said.

Expectations remained unclear Monday for the outcome of the NARUC Telecom Committee’s expected vote on a net neutrality resolution. The resolution, introduced by committee member and Vermont Public Service Board member John Burke, would encourage the FCC to use the Telecom Act’s Title II and Section 706 as the jurisdictional basis as it creates new net neutrality rules (CD July 14 p6). Burke told us Monday the staff subcommittee on telecom had given a positive reception to the resolution over the weekend, but he was unsure how the full Telecom Committee would act. NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay said industry representatives could comment Tuesday, before the committee votes. Burke told us he expects opposition from many of those representatives. Several Telecom Committee members told us Monday they were undecided on their position. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner James Cawley said he was “genuinely not sure” how he would vote. District of Columbia Public Service Commission Chairwoman Betty Ann Kane said she needed to review revisions to the original resolution before she decided. Telecom Committee Vice Chairwoman Catherine Sandoval, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission, declined to comment on her position.

The Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) asked the FCC Wednesday to waive the Aug. 10, 2013, deadline that the Wireline Bureau had imposed for the department to file a written description of the process the state’s Department for Children and Families (DCF) would use to provide eligible telecommunications carriers electronic notice that a potential Lifeline subscriber was accepted or rejected due to duplicative support within five days of an application’s receipt (http://bit.ly/1sCV9Si). The Wireline Bureau had imposed the deadline in a February 2013 order conditionally granting the Department of Public Service’s certification to drop out of the National Lifeline Accountability Database (http://bit.ly/1ka7fNL). DCF electronically notifies ETCs if a subscriber has been accepted or rejected within five days of receiving the application, meeting the requirement by Aug. 1, 2013, DPS said.

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) criticized two bills under consideration in the New Jersey legislature that seek to promote domestic business, saying Tuesday that the bill would “cause more harm than good for U.S. businesses” (http://bit.ly/TTsaNP). Both bills, Senate Bill 1811 (http://bit.ly/1r9aAl2) and Assembly Bill 3059 (http://bit.ly/1mK2b8t), would require goods used in public contracts to be manufactured in the U.S. and businesses that receive public contracts or development assistance to disclose outsourcing information. The bills “could unintentionally isolate New Jersey from U.S.-based businesses that are also competing in the global marketplace, resulting in increased costs for taxpayers in the state,” ITI said in a blog post. The New Jersey legislature is on recess for the summer, but ITI said it will continue to monitor both bills during the fall legislative session.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s E-rate draft order to use $2 billion in unused funds for Wi-Fi internal connections is “greatly needed,” but the commission’s “first priority should be focused on making sure each and every school building and public library is connected to the Internet with fiber or the fastest broadband connection available,” said the Nebraska Public Service Commission in a letter filed Tuesday as an ex parte communication (http://bit.ly/1oyJLnT) in docket 13-184. The PSC is concerned about Wheeler’s proposal to allocate funds to schools on a per-student basis instead of based on the cost of a project. Assumptions made in what Wheeler circulated in an order to shift funds from voice and other services towards Wi-Fi “significantly overestimates the savings,” commented the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (http://bit.ly/1oyLwkZ). The phase-out “would equal only about $675 million; nowhere near the additional $3 billion needed to implement the Commission’s $5 billion plan,” the association said. The FCC considers an E-rate order Friday, and it may be a party-line vote (CD July 9 p1) (See separate report above.)

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) President Colette Honorable nominated Idaho Public Service Commission President Paul Kjellander and West Virginia Public Service Commissioner Ryan Palmer Tuesday to the Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Telecommunications Services. NARUC nominates seven of the FCC conference’s members (http://bit.ly/U4zbvM).

The Overland Park, Kansas, City Council voted Monday to approve two agreements to allow Google to install fiber huts and Wi-Fi infrastructure in the city for its Google Fiber network (http://bit.ly/1n4Vvfm). Members of the council had been concerned about the deal, prompting Google to temporarily halt its plans to include Overland Park in its network (CD May 1 p5). Google said in a statement it will “spend the next few months making sure it’s possible to build our network here, but this vote was a great step forward.” Google separately said residents in four cities in Johnson County, Kansas, can begin signing up for the Google Fiber service. Residents in those cities -- Mission Woods, Roeland Park, Westwood and Westwood Hills -- have until Sept. 12 to sign up for the service. Residents in some Kansas City “fiberhoods” have an additional chance to sign up for Google Fiber. Those neighborhoods must sign up by Aug. 7, Google said. Overland Park is the corporate home of wireless carrier Sprint.