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.
The California Legislature’s AB-1326, which would require “virtual currency businesses” to obtain a license to offer services in California, “is so vague that it’s unclear what companies are, in fact, ‘virtual currency businesses,’” which “threatens the future of virtual currency experimentation and innovation in the state,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation Activism Director Rainey Reitman in a blog post Friday. EFF has been working to get changes it feels will improve the bill but the likelihood that the measure will move forward in the coming weeks means “the time for conversation is over,” she said. EFF is now “urging concerned Californians to speak out against this legislation by calling, emailing, and tweeting at their state elected officials immediately,” Reitman said. EFF believes the bill is premature because the digital currency market is “in its infancy” and that attempting to regulate digital currency services at the state level will create confusion, she said. The office of Assembly Banking and Finance Committee Chairman Matt Dababneh, a Democrat who sponsored AB-1326, didn't comment.
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.“
SouthernLINC Wireless will offer mission-critical 4G LTE Advanced data services to parent company Southern Co. utilities and to local businesses and government in the utilities' service territories, a Thursday news release from the carrier said. The first offerings will be available in Atlanta, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa in mid-2016, it said. Ericsson is providing the radio access network and evolved packet cores, and Cisco is providing the multiprotocol label switching equipment, the carrier said. In 2017, LTE data services will expand to the greater Montgomery area and across all of Georgia Power's service territory, it said. In 2018, LTE data services will be available in all service territories of Southern Co.'s electric utilities, SouthernLINC said.
Level 3 received a contract with Pennsylvania, a news release from the company said. Level 3 will expand its current Master IT Services Invitation to Qualify program contract to include security, network and telecom services, the company said. These services are in addition to the existing consulting services awarded under a previous master contract, it said.
NTIA plans a one-day regional broadband summit, “Digital New England,” Sept. 28 in Portland, Maine, a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register said. It's part of the BroadbandUSA program and is being hosted in conjunction with Next Century Cities, NTIA said. The summit will present best practices and lessons learned from broadband network infrastructure build-outs and digital inclusion programs from Maine and surrounding states, including projects funded by NTIA's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and State Broadband Initiative grant programs funded by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it said of the event at Holiday Inn by the Bay, 88 Spring St.
General Communication boosted its investment in cloud services in Alaska with the purchase of Network Business Systems, a news release from the company said Thursday. The purchase closed that day and GCI has offered all NBS employees positions, it said.
Officials were still trying on Wednesday to figure out what caused a massive cellphone outage that knocked out service to customers in the Southeast on the AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon networks Tuesday. A fiber cable was reported to have been cut in western Kentucky along the Tennessee/Kentucky border, said Buddy Rogers, Kentucky Emergency Management public information officer. He didn't have any other specifics about the circumstances but said emergency services providers and other officials remained in contact through the Department of Military Affairs' radio communications system -- which is a statewide two-way radio system -- satellite radio/phones and other communications systems and devices. No issues were reported to the state emergency operations center in Kentucky while services were being restored, nor were there any requests for state-provided resources, Rogers said. Sprint and Verizon tweeted about the issue as it was happening, updating customers about what was going on. Sprint said the issue was caused by a local exchange provider, and both Verizon and Sprint said they were aware of a connection issue in Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee that engineers were working to resolve. A Sprint spokesperson said services had been restored Wednesday. An AT&T spokeswoman said wireless and wireline service was restored for all customers in parts of the Southeast affected by a "hardware-related network issue." Neither Verizon nor T-Mobile commented. The Jeffersontown Police Department in Kentucky posted on its Facebook page that the 911 systems were down and gave an alternate number to call for help. A few hours later, it said 911 lines were back in service.
A ribbon cutting for the D.C. region's first exclusively licensed 24 GHz spectrum wireless fiber link was held Wednesday, said a news release from FiberTower. The ultraGig network meets federal Physically Diverse Network building standards and will provide gigabit service to the Silver Spring (Maryland) Innovation Center, it said. UltraGig is part of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Executive’s Ultra Montgomery program, which aims to expand knowledge-based jobs that depend on high-speed broadband, the release said. The ultraGig network is the result of a partnership between Atlantech Online and FiberTower.